Cherished Beginnings (15 page)

"It was the best thing for both of us, I'm sure. She eventually married a wealthy man, and they have three well-behaved children, four status-symbol cars, and six homes, one to suit her every whim. For her, it's a far cry from Shuffletown. And I—well, there's never really been room for a woman in my life since then. I'm married to my practice, I suppose."

They walked on until they reached the jetty, where Xan suggested they turn back.

"Why is your practice so important to you?" Maura asked after a while. She looked up at him curiously.

"Most doctors don't want to work in Shuffletown. Medicine isn't about making money, although I'm doing well now. Medicine is for helping people."

"Oh, Xan, that's exactly how I feel! If only..." but her sentence died before she could utter it. She had been about to say, "If only we could work together." But with their different viewpoints, that was impossible.

Instead, she asked him more about his childhood. Xan found her easy to talk to and was forthcoming about his childhood dream of becoming a doctor. "It was what I wanted from the time I was about six," he said. "I never told anyone because there wasn't anyone to tell. Aunt Lucy was busy with her church groups and bridge club. She did her best, but she wasn't much company for a young boy."

He'd spoken of his boyhood loneliness many times before, to many different women, but this time he felt like cutting the story short. He had always been well aware that his orphaned state made him the object of much sympathy, and that worked well in his favor. By talking about it now, he knew that Maura, as kind and nurturing as she was, would be over-influenced by it. And he wanted her to care for him on his own merits, not because of some overblown story of his life that he had used too many times for its emotional effect. The old games and gimmicks didn't work with her. He wasn't sure if this was good or bad.

As Xan spoke, Maura was once more very much aware of her attraction to him. She found herself wanting to feel his arms around her, and her skin prickled with the electricity of being near him. With embarrassment, she remembered the naiveté of her earlier assurances to Kathleen.

But how, she wondered in sheer desperation, was she supposed to learn all the things that most other women learned by osmosis and by living day by day? Her contemporaries were either married or single, many of them divorced and veterans of various love affairs ranging from the casual one-night stand to the liaison with a married man to the long-term commitment. Where did Maura fit into this complicated world? How was she going to catch up?

She hadn't thought she'd be confronted with this issue so early. She had planned to sidestep all of it for as long as she could. What she hadn't counted on was the entry of a handsome eligible man into her life.

Just then Xan stopped walking, and his hand slipped from hers and slid around her shoulders. "Look," he said, pointing with his free hand toward the beach ahead of them.

A solitary white-tailed deer stood at the edge of the sea, its head raised. It was utterly beautiful in its innocence as it stood before the path of the moon spread out over the gently undulating water. Maura had to catch her breath at the sight. As they watched, the deer wheeled and trotted along the shore, then turned and walked gracefully toward the dunes where it disappeared, after one last look toward them, into a thicket of wax myrtle.

Xan said, "Often when I come home late at night, I'll sit out on the deck, especially if it's been a difficult delivery. It's so peaceful and quiet, and drinking in the beauty of this place helps me to relax. Deer slip in and out of the dunes like moonlit phantoms. Sometimes in the morning I'll find their footprints leading right up to my house."

They were approaching his house now. His arm remained around her shoulders, comfortable there. "What an enchanting house it is," said Maura, admiring the set of it from where they walked.

"I designed it myself," he said. "I wanted something that would display the sea to its best advantage and where I could include the natural beauty of this island as part of the decor."

Maura thought about the furnishings she'd seen inside. There was old mixed with new, grass cloth on the walls, dark wood tones interspersed with light. "You've succeeded," she told him. "It suits you."

They mounted the stairs to the deck, and Xan opened the sliding glass door. She entered, not really knowing what was expected of her. Xan probably entertained women here all the time—women who knew much more than she did about talking to a man. She wondered what those other women were like. Sophisticated, probably, and wearing stylish clothes instead of hand-me-downs from a sister. They'd be trailing expensive fragrances as they walked, such as Chanel No. 5 or—well, she didn't know the names of any other expensive perfumes.

Waiting for some clue from him, watching him covertly as he slid the door closed behind them, she wandered awkwardly to the lighted curio cabinet, its open shelves displaying unusually crafted pottery jugs.

"What are these?" she asked, picking one up and turning it to observe it better. It felt cool and smooth against her hands. The small stoneware jug wasn't much larger than a coffee mug and modeled with a face on the side opposite the handle.

"It's a face vessel. I collect African-American art of the type made by South Carolina slaves. Do you like it?" Xan had moved close behind her.

"Yes," she said. She liked the drollness of the face, which seemed an expression of the artist's sense of humor. She probably would never have thought of this simple pottery as art, although of course it was. She didn't really understand most art. But this, a piece she could put her hands on, she did understand.

"Let me show you some more of the things I've collected," Xan said, replacing the jug on its shelf. He took her hand and led her up a flight of stairs to a landing where overhead spotlights shone on a quilt whose colorfully appliquéd blocks told the story of slave life.

"Here are a man and woman jumping over a broom," Xan said, pointing to one square. "That's how slaves used to get married. In the days when slaves were often ignored by the church, jumping over a broom was a tradition left over from Africa and the only ceremony many of them had." He pointed to another square. "Here's a cotton field, and the workers with their long sacks are picking cotton. This is a very old quilt, made by a slave in 1859."

Up the next flight of stairs, a collection of interesting baskets hung on the wall. Maura followed Xan as he led the way. "These are baskets woven by the women in Shuffletown. They sell them to tourists in Charleston, but I received them as a fee for delivering babies. The parents were too poor to pay me, but I was happy to get these instead of money."

The baskets were ingenious coils of pliable sweet grass. "The workmanship is beautiful," said Maura, reaching out to trace her fingers along the spiraled fiber. It felt stiff to the touch.

"I'm glad you like it. You're likely to be paid in such things when you start your practice."

"I'll welcome anything anyone wants to give me in lieu of money," she said, thankful for the O'Malley Family Foundation grant that enabled her to say this. "It's not easy to furnish a place from scratch. And," she went on, hoping to make light of it, "scratch isn't comfortable to sit on."

He looked down at her, puzzled. "Don't you have furniture? Left over from before?"

"No," she said rather abruptly, and she eased herself out from under his arm and walked down the hall to the place where another quilt, this one a faded red-and-pink patchwork design, hung.

"You'll have to buy some furniture, then," he said. "What kind do you like?"

She massaged her elbows, thinking of the ultramodern, too-clean lines of the furniture that Kathleen and most of her friends preferred. As a nun, she'd always looked at items in terms of their usefulness. Now, through Xan's eyes, she began to understand about the pleasurable possibilities of things she had taken for granted—furniture, art. There was a whole world of taste waiting for her to discover it. The thought tantalized her.

"I guess in furniture I'd like something with a little bit of character," she said thoughtfully. "Antiques, perhaps." Antiques would fit in well with the atmosphere of her farmhouse. And the patina of years on someone's discarded but once-loved furniture would give Maura herself a sense of ongoing history. She'd felt rootless ever since she'd cut herself off from the convent.

"Then you'll have to let me go shopping with you. I know some of the best places. Not the tourist traps in the downtown historic area, but tiny shops where the markup isn't high."

"I'd like that," she said. She looked at him curiously. "I'm surprised that you know about antiques."

"I learned from Aunt Lucy. Most of her things had to be sold, but I managed to save a few of the pieces I liked. Look at this," and he took her hand again and drew her into what turned out to be a bedroom.

His bedroom,
she thought nervously. She'd never been in a man's bedroom before. This was a particularly handsome one, dimly lighted by a lamp on the serpentine-front dresser and decorated in restful shades of green with peach accents. A huge four-poster bed covered with a white spread crocheted in a popcorn pattern dominated the room. Narrow wooden blinds, slanted to afford a view of the beach, masked the tall window.

"The bed is magnificent," she said, taking it in. Its mattress was so high off the floor that it had to be reached by three portable steps that had clearly been made just for climbing into this particular bed. The stair treads were covered with finely worked needlepoint pads, each bearing the Copeland family crest.

"It's called a rice bed," Xan told her. "See the rice plants carved into each of the four bedposts? It was in use on the Copeland rice plantation outside Charleston back in the 1700s."

Just looking at the bed made Maura nervous about Xan's designs on her. She turned away toward the corner of the room, focusing on a painting on the wall. It was a pen-and-ink drawing of a Charleston street scene. It made her think that she'd need pictures, too, for her living quarters. She hadn't thought about furnishings for her farmhouse nearly enough, but she'd have to if she were going to make the house a real home. Suddenly, having a real home of her own, her very own place in the world, seemed urgently important.

"What is it like, living alone?" she asked, unaware of the poignancy of her question.

Xan's eyes shot toward hers and softened. "Lonely, sometimes," he admitted. He moved closer to her, his front to her back, blocking her exit from the corner. Her hair tumbled across her shoulders, wine-dark in the soft light from the lamp. Her hips swelled outward from the supple curve of her waist, and he ached to slide his hands around that waist and slowly smooth them downward.

"I'll have to get used to it, I suppose," she said, and then she couldn't speak anymore because she felt his intention and her body was responding despite her willing it to go on talking as before.

His hand beneath her hair was not at all unexpected. "Maura," he said, his voice deep in his throat, his breath caressing her abundant fall of hair, "I can't go on being near you without having something more."

She closed her eyes against the wave of warmth that swept upward from the region of her stomach, all thoughts of decorating her home swept aside. She was swirling in great sweeping circles, circles that encompassed her past, her present and her future, around and around, confusing her.

Who was she? Was she that Maura who had entered the convent at eighteen, sure of herself and her dreams? Or was she the Maura who had left California and the convent, her dreams shattered, bravely trying to pick up the pieces and go on with her life? Or was she the Maura who stood here, immobilized by one touch from Xan Copeland?

Before she met Xan, she had never felt lust. She'd dated some guys in high school and made out with them, but she'd never experienced love. She had no way of differentiating between the two emotions and no past experiences to set guidelines or limits. Despair at her own ignorance wrenched her heart, and at the moment, she felt like an utter fool.

In the meantime, Xan had narrowed the space between them. His fingers slid slowly down the sides of her neck, paused at the hollow of her throat to tarry over her throbbing pulse, and moved surely to capture her shoulders. Her head tipped backward of its own accord, her eyelids growing heavier and heavier until they closed. She inhaled deeply, his scent filling her nostrils and lingering seductively at the back of her throat.

"Sometimes," he said softly into her ear, his words no more than a warm breath, "it's terrible living by myself. I don't like waking up alone, Maura."

Her head now rested against his shoulder. His arms wrapped her close as his hands found their way to her breasts. They stroked gently, reverently. She arched backward into the feeling, so exquisite and pleasureful and threatening to overcome propriety.

"I love touching you," he whispered close to her ear. "You're so solid. All woman, but very vulnerable. Oh, Maura, be my woman." It was a heartfelt plea. He sensed her struggle for control, a struggle that was losing its fight for space amid her confused emotions. "Don't fight it," he urged. "Let me. Just let me."

She submitted to the languid ease of it. It was so pleasant to flow along with him, swept into a tide of passion and loving that offered sweet oblivion to everything else. He rained kisses upon her throat, wet kisses that trailed exquisitely to the planes of her face and the angle of her jaw. She heedlessly sought his lips with hers, turning her face to his in mute offering, and, still behind her, he cupped the exposed curve of her cheek so that her lips might not escape while he drank his fill urgently.