A Kiss Remembered (8 page)

It nearly went flying from her hand when he asked from above her. “How’re you doing down there? You’re as quiet as a mouse.”

“Fine, I—” Whatever she had been about to say never made it past the congestion in her throat. He was splashing cologne on his cheeks as he leaned over the railing of the loft … bare-chested.

His torso was covered with that fine dark hair that seemed to invite a woman to touch it, to test its crinkling texture with her fingertips. She found herself studying the hair just above his gold belt buckle. Vividly she remembered the way it had felt under her hand when she caressed him in the library. Her whole body felt oddly weak, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away.

“I’ll be right with you,” he said, smiling down at her and retreating beyond her range of vision.

Using inordinate care to keep from dropping it, she closed the compact and replaced it in her purse, searching now for her hairbrush. Maybe if she concentrated on such ordinary tasks, she wouldn’t think about how he looked or the blood pumping through her veins like rich syrup.

“Dammit.”

The muffled curse came from the loft. She heard shuffling movements, another curse. “What is it?”

“A button just came off my shirt and I don’t have another clean one that goes with the coat I was going to wear.”

“Do you have a sewing kit?”

“Sure.”

“Bring it here. I’ll see what I can do.”

Within seconds, he was loping down the staircase with a speed that would have made her dizzy. “We’re in luck. There’s some blue thread in here,” he said, extracting from the sewing kit a card with several colors of thread wound around it. A slender sewing needle was secured in the cardboard.

She took the sewing implements from him, thankful for something to do so she wouldn’t have to look at him. He had left the shirt unbuttoned, and a close-up view of that wonderfully masculine chest was more disturbing than a distant one. “Where’s the button?”

“Here.” He passed the small white button to her.

“Are you going to … to … uh, take it off ?”

“Can’t you sew on the button this way?”

She swallowed. “Sure,” she said with a cocky assurance she was far from feeling. Somehow, despite palsied fingers, she managed to thread the needle with the pale blue thread.

“Should we sit down?” he asked.

“No. This is fine.”

The button was the third one down from the collar, which placed it in the middle of his chest. Pushing aside a wave of self-consciousness, she took the fine material between her fingers, held it taut and, slipping her other hand under it, pulled the needle through.

She worked as quickly as she could without snarling the thread. Ever aware of his chest just beneath her fingers, she tried to avoid touching him. Invariably, however, she was tickled by springy hairs or warmed by the skin under her hand. There were moments when he didn’t seem to be breathing. When his breath was released, she felt it on her forehead and cheeks. She could swear that the dull thudding she heard was his heartbeat, but it might have been her own. By the time she knotted the thread, her senses were reeling.

“Scissors?” she asked huskily.

CHAPTER 5

S
cissors?” He repeated the word as though he’d never heard it before. His eyes were staring into hers, peeling away layer after layer of defense until he reached her soul. “I don’t know where they are,” he said at last.

“Never mind.” Not thinking, only wishing to end this project that had completely unnerved her, she leaned forward and caught the thread between her teeth, biting it in two. Not until then did she realize that her lips hovered a fraction of an inch from his chest. Her breath stirred the hair covering it.

“Shelley.” He sighed.

His hands came up to touch her hair reverently. She couldn’t turn away. Her brain was telling her to step back, escape, flee, but her body refused to obey. Instead she surrendered to the seduction of the moment. She didn’t even try to fight the compulsion that swept her toward him with the irrevocability of the tide. Sweetly she nuzzled him with her nose.

“Again, Shelley, again. Please.”

Apparently he was as transported by what was happening as she. His voice was uneven and thin, lacking its usual resonance. He placed his thumbs in front of her ears and encircled the back of her head with his strong, slender fingers.

She closed her eyes. When first her lips touched him, they were hesitant. But the graphic reaction of his body encouraged her. She kissed him again, slowly, with measured kisses that charted a path across the expanse of his chest.

When her lips encountered his nipple, she raised her head slightly. She could feel his eyes boring into the top of her head. Seconds stretched out into a small eternity. The hypnotic movement of his hands on her scalp stilled. He waited.

“Should I?” she whispered. “Do you want me to?”

“Do
you
want to?”

She made the decision subconsciously. Before she realized the full implications of the action, her tongue had slipped past her lips to flick over his nipple. Then she teased it further with delicate licks.

Grant gave a short cry before he took her in his arms. “Oh God, you’re sweet. So sweet.” She tilted her head up and he lowered his mouth to hers. Ravenous lips fused together. His tongue plunged into her mouth and de-flowered it, making it his. Careful of the needle she still held in her hand, she hooked her arm around his neck, drawing him downward, closer still. Her other hand splayed on the majestic chest, combed through the forest of hair, pressed the hard muscles.

Her breasts seemed to swell with emotion. He moved away enough to lower his hand and touch them. His knuckles moved gently over the sensitive buds, making them firmer beneath the silk. He fondled her so exquisitely that she called his name against his lips.

“Shelley, did you ever fantasize about this? About my touching you this way?”

“Yes, yes.”

“So did I. May God forgive me, but I did, and when you were much too young to figure in this kind of fantasy.” His lips moved back and forth across hers. “We can make all our fantasies come true,” he urged.

She leaned against him weakly, wanting to give in yet knowing it wouldn’t be wise. She loved him. At some point in the last ten years she had come to that indisputable conclusion. He was no longer an idol, the subject of youthful imaginings. He was the man intended for her to love, and she wanted that love to be fulfilled.

But to him, she might only be a novelty. While she had lived an unhappy life, pining for him, thinking of him constantly, dreaming impossible dreams, manufacturing romantic situations in her mind that would never happen, he had been living a hectic, whirlwind life in Washington. Had he really thought of her then, or were his methods of getting her into bed just more sophisticated than Daryl’s had been?

She had constructed a new life for herself out of the rubble of her shattered marriage. Her plans for the future were carefully laid out and going according to schedule. Should she let Grant Chapman into her life, he might upset that schedule, if not destroy her plans for the future altogether.

The pain of leaving his embrace was worse than having a dagger pierce her heart, but she gradually pushed against him until he relented and let her go. She turned and walked to the window, staring out at the twilit evening. She heard the rasp of his zipper as he lowered it to tuck his shirttail into his trousers before doing it up again. Her ears picked up the sound of his muted footsteps on the thick rug as he came to stand behind her.

“I was never Missy Lancaster’s lover.” He hadn’t touched her, yet his words caused her to spin around, her eyes wide.

“Grant,” she said dolefully, “that has nothing to do with us. I’m reluctant for us to … to … sleep together, but not because of what happened between you and that girl in Washington.”

The relaxing of the lines on either side of his mouth testified to his relief. But his eyes lost none of their intensity. “I’m glad, because there was nothing between Missy and me. At least not what everyone thought. To have told the unmitigated truth would have been to divulge a confidence I couldn’t break.” His hand came up to grip her shoulders. “Trust me, Shelley. I’m not lying about this.”

Her eyes roved his face. There was no disguising the anxiety there. “I believe you, Grant.”

He sighed and released his death grip on her shoulders. “Thank you for that.” He kissed her lightly on the lips. “Shall we go? I can’t jeopardize my position on this faculty by being late to the chancellor’s party.”

A short time later, they left the duplex. He had retrieved his sportcoat from upstairs and knotted a necktie under his shirt collar. Shelley had retreated to the half bath to freshen her makeup—which truly needed it now—and to brush her hair.

The chancellor lived on an estate owned by the university. Set on a hill, the house was an imposing colonial with six white columns across a broad front porch. Grant parked the Datsun at the foot of the hill and they started up the incline on foot.

His voice was deceptively innocent as he asked, “If the business in Washington wasn’t the reason, why did you stop me, Shelley?”

Her footsteps faltered on the gravel driveway. He clasped her elbow and urged her on. “I need more time,” she said in a low voice. “I need to know if what I’m feeling now is real or just an extension of what I felt for you ten years ago.”

That was a lie. She knew she loved him, always had, always would. But she didn’t want him to know that yet. “I’m not sure I want to get involved with anyone right now. I’ve had a difficult time getting my life together. Now that it looks like I might make something of it, I’m afraid to gamble.”

She stopped and faced him. “I haven’t changed much since high school. At least where morals are concerned. Sex isn’t a casual pastime to me. I couldn’t sleep with you one night, and the next day go blithely on my way as though nothing had happened.”

His eyes were lit with an internal flame that burned into hers. “I’m glad you feel that way. Because once I slept with you, I doubt I’d ever be able to let you go.”

Flabbergasted by what he’d said and the profound way he’d said it, she remained mesmerized by his eyes. Finally, forcing herself out of the trance, she said, “Besides we’re still teacher and student.”

He tossed his head back and let out a short laugh. “You can always fall back on that, can’t you?” She returned his grin as he steered her up the steps to the porch. “Come up with a better excuse, Shelley. Who the hell cares about
that
?”

Chancellor Martin did.

The cocktail—or rather wine—party was as stuffy and dull as Grant had predicted it would be. They were ceremoniously greeted by a receiving line as soon as the butler let them in the door. Chancellor Martin’s physical appearance was perfectly suited to his career as an academician. He was austere, gray-haired, high of brow, tall in stature. He handled his introduction to Shelley graciously enough, but she felt that his shrewd blue eyes were sizing her up.

His wife, a stout matron with gray hair a shade bluer than her husband’s, spoke to Grant and Shelley with an insincere smile carved onto her face. She seemed more interested in adjusting the cluster of diamonds pinned to her ample bosom than in them.

“Can you imagine Mrs. Martin writhing in the throes of passion?” Grant asked out of the corner of his mouth as they moved away. Shelley nearly dropped her glass of wine. She had accepted it from the silver tray another rented-for-the-evening butler was passing around. She was convulsed with silent laughter.

“Shut up,” Shelley ground out between her teeth as she tried to maintain a decorous mien. “You’re going to make me spill my wine and then I’ll have to have this blouse dry-cleaned, when otherwise I might get by with wearing it one more time.”

They mingled, and Shelley couldn’t help noticing that the women in the room, faculty members and spouses alike, gravitated to Grant like homing pigeons. She was sickened by their subtle questions, purposely drafted to lead him into a discussion of Missy Lancaster and her suicide. Deftly he managed to detour them to other topics.

The men in the room discussed the afternoon’s football game, the season in general and the team’s chances for a bowl game. Grant introduced Shelley without explaining who she was, but one of her former professors remembered her just the same. Shelley was sure that news of their student-teacher relationship was spreading through the room.

A half hour later Shelley and Grant found themselves in Chancellor Martin’s den. They were discussing the merits of backgammon over chess when the chancellor himself walked in.

“Ah, there you are, Mr. Chapman. I was hoping for a word with you.” He sounded friendly enough, but the way he closed the double doors to the room behind him filled Shelley with foreboding.

“We were just admiring this room,” Grant said congenially. “It’s beautiful, as is the rest of the house.”

“Yes, well,” he said, coughing unnecessarily, “as you know the university owns the house, but when I was appointed chancellor and we moved in, Marjorie redecorated it.”

Moving to the bookcase-lined wall, he clasped his hands behind him and rocked back on his heels. “Mr. Chapman—”

“Excuse me,” Shelley said, edging her way toward the door.

“No, Mrs. Robins, as this concerns you, I’ll ask you to stay.”

She cast a furtive glance in Grant’s direction, then said, “All right.”

“Now,” the chancellor said ponderously, “as you know, this university maintains high standards both academically and morally. We, meaning the board of directors, care about the reputation of this school, both as an institute of higher learning and as a community unto itself. Because we are a church-sponsored university, we must safeguard that reputation. Therefore,” he said, swiveling his head around and glaring at them in a gesture guaranteed to strike terror into the heart of any miscreant, “the members of the faculty must have sterling reputations on campus and off.”

A deathly quiet had descended over the room. Neither Grant nor Shelley spoke or moved, but out of the corner of her eye she saw that Grant’s fists were clenched at his sides.