Male Order Bride (25 page)

"Lacey," Dominick said. He had stopped what he was doing
and had been watching her approach for the last few minutes. "What are
you doing here?"

"Walking the beach," she answered. "Great morning, isn't
it?"

"Surely you didn't walk all the way from Biloxi."

"No, only the last part," she answered, smiling, not
wanting to give him any details about anything she didn't have to. "How
about you? I didn't know you knew how to sail a boat."
Outside
of a bathtub, that is
, she added to herself, and let her
grin widen, pushing her sunglasses farther up her nose as she pretended
studious interest in the simple craft.

"I've been out once before. I'm sort of getting the hang
of it."

He would do much better just to find a woman who was
competent at sailing a cat and let her do the work for him. That seemed
more his style anyway. "Have you been sailing all weekend?" she asked,
hoping if she kept throwing questions at him it wouldn't give him much
opportunity to ask her to explain her own presence.

"I just drove over last night. Got caught in that
rainstorm."

She nodded, and started asking "What's that?" and "What
does this thingamajig do?" and "How do you make it work?" to make him
think he was impressing her by knowing most of the answers. She stood
back, put her hands on her hips and shook her head. "Very impressive,"
she said, but what she was thinking was that she liked the colors of
the sail. The rest of the thing he could keep, along with his macho
captain's image. "Why don't you set her asail? I'll christen you with a
handful of sand, thrown snowball-style. How would that be?"

"You're still as offbeat as you always were," he said,
laughing.

"Thank you," she said, and grinned even wider. It had been
offbeat enough to keep him from marrying her. That must have been
something of a success, even though she hadn't seen it that way at the
time.

"But what are you doing here?" he asked.

"Walking the beach," she answered. "And leaving in a
couple of hours."

"Where are you staying?"

"Here," she answered, evading anything specific. She could
walk around to the other side of the condominium instead of entering
from the deck side, so he wouldn't know which one she was walking to.
"How about you?"

He named a cheap motel she remembered passing on the
highway and thought that figured too.

"Well, hop on," she said, impatient to leave him, getting
more and more depressed as they stood here together trying to find
topics they could discuss, "and I'll give you a shove off."

It took both of them to push the small craft off the sand
and past the first breakers. Dominick hopped on and yelled, "Come on!
There's room for two."

"I can't," she answered, stepping backward. "I've already
had too much sun." She touched her nose and winced; that was going to
be sensitive for a while, and then she would probably peel. She stepped
farther back and waved, then turned and walked out of the water, her
feet and legs encrusted with sand.

Early-morning walks, she decided, were for the birds,
preferably seagulls.

So that was Dominick
, Rafe thought,
standing at the picture window in the bedroom, where he had watched
Lacey talking and laughing and touching the man a little while ago.
Rafe's hand went automatically to the scar on the side of his face. No
wonder she had fallen in love with a man who was as handsome as
Dominick. Any girl would. Rafe's lips lifted in a wry grin which anyone
watching would have labeled an "I-don't-stand-a-chance" grimace.

He turned at the sound of Lacey shutting off the water in
the shower. Then he turned back to the window, where he could still see
the dot of the small craft's sail on the horizon.

She had walked into the bedroom mumbling, "Don't ever let
me go for a walk on the beach alone anymore."

At first he had thought she would follow that statement by
something to the effect that someone on the beach had been harassing
her. He had waited in tense silence, giving her every chance to fill in
the blanks. Instead she had showed him her reddening arms and thighs.
When she took off her sunglasses he could see the pale imprint of where
the glasses had blocked the sun from her face.

"Who was that guy you were talking to on the beach?" he
had asked, hating himself for letting her see it had bothered him. He
had told her she was free to do what she wanted to do when she was away
from him—when she was traveling, whenever he was out of town.
And he wanted her to enjoy whatever relationships came her way to the
fullest extent. He just didn't want to hear about it. He just didn't
want to wake up after making love with her all night long to find her
chatting away the breakfast hours with another man.
Dammit
,
he thought,
I don't want to share her, not even when I'm not
around to know about it
.

"Oh, him. You'll never guess," she said, and laughed.

Don't start playing guessing games with me
,
Rafe thought.
We haven't played games with each other up
until now. Don't play on my jealousy or we both might regret it
.
"Obviously not, because I've never seen the man before," Rafe answered,
trying to keep cool about this, trying not to let her see how much he
was raging inside.

"That was Dominick. Remember, I told you about him?"

Yes, he remembered. The ex-boyfriend. The one she
supposedly didn't like. Then why had she been smiling the whole time
she was talking to him, and the whole time she had been dressed like
that? He took a few minutes to appreciate the swimsuit she was almost
not wearing and stopped himself from making a comment about that. "Did
you know he was going to be here?" he asked. Had she gotten up early
purposely to meet him? Had they been out on the boat together before he
had woken up and seen them together? If she was going to go sailing
with another man, she should at least have the decency to do it out of
sight of his bedroom window.

"I was hoping he wouldn't," she answered, pulling the band
out of her hair to let the strands fall around her face in a silky
mass. "But when you told me where we were staying, I remembered this
was one of his favorite hangouts, so I wasn't surprised to see him this
morning. Although I wish it had been under better circumstances."

He could just imagine the circumstances, watching her step
naked out of the swimsuit, wondering how many times she had gone to
Dominick the way she was coming to him now, pressing her hot and
inviting body along the length of his. "Like what?" he asked, not
trusting himself to touch her more than superficially around the waist,
afraid that he might take his anger out on her.

"Oh, you know," she said, running her finger along his
jawline, unaware of how clenched he was holding his teeth together.
"Wearing something slinky."

"You don't call that slinky?" he asked, looking at the
small scrap of material in a pile on the floor across the room.

"I didn't wear that for him," Lacey answered, sensing some
of Rafe's agitation and returning it with some spice of her own. "I
wore it for you, but you were too asleep to notice."

"Last thing I noticed was a naked body next to mine."

"Right," she said, smiling, trying to kiss his ear by
standing on her tiptoes, "and that's where I'm picking
up—where you left off."

He sighed. It was difficult to be mad at her when she
aroused him so, even when he was mad. "Tell me more about the way you
wanted to run into your old boyfriend," he prompted her, wanting to get
that behind him before he made up his mind whether or not he was going
to give in to his desire.

"Oh, you know," she said, "I'd rather have met him with
you beside me, just to show him I could do better, and
am
doing better without him."

"Oh," Rafe answered, softening because the appeal of
making love with her again was beginning to outweigh the anger he had
been feeling a few minutes before. It could have been a chance meeting
between them on the beach.

"Do you know what the best part was?" she asked, rubbing
up against him, enticing him to forget everything but what was
happening between the two of them.

"What?" he asked, giving in and kissing her, while his
mind still lingered on that bobbing sail in the distance.

"I didn't feel the first twinge of feeling for him. Not
even a flash of memory for the good times we shared."

Rafe relaxed against Lacey, pulling her tighter against
him. If he couldn't trust her at her word, he couldn't trust any woman.
This was one woman he wanted to trust with his life.

"Do you know why I think that was?" she was asking, still
talking as she started to unbutton the shirt he had just put on, and
unzip the jeans he had just climbed into.

"Why?" he asked, helping her with his clothes.

"We didn't ever have any good times. The good times were
always in my imagination, dreams of what I wanted but never even came
close to having. Until I met you, Rafe."

He couldn't stand it any longer. He stepped out of his
jeans and hauled her against him, not even bothering to take her the
distance to the bed. He started kissing her shoulder, letting his
tongue swirl around to her soft breasts, and he took her down with him,
laying her gently on the cushion of carpet, cradling her body as he
kissed her. She tasted of salt and sea. Her body moved sensuously up to
greet his, like the waves rushing in to take him.

She was wet and ready for him, as hot with desire as he
was for her. Their coming together was like the crash of breakers
against the shore. Rafe released his mind to the sensations she was
causing as she held him deep within her.

Then they were both laughing and tears were streaming down
her cheeks.

"Did I hurt you?" he asked when he could breathe again,
ready to leave her.

"Oh, no. No," she said, smiling, shaking her head, pulling
him back because she wanted to keep him with her as long as possible.
"Don't leave me."

He kissed her, smoothing back her damp hair, wondering how
he could ever have questioned her this morning. What would he do if she
left him?

Their lovemaking that time had been shorter than ever
before, but for both of them it had also been the most intense
experience they had shared in each other's arms. Rafe rested his cheek
against her left breast, and made up his mind he was just going to have
to do something to ease his own mind about the permanency of Lacey in
his life.

He wanted to tell her now what he was thinking, but he
couldn't. It had to be something he gave a lot more thought to, as
serious a step as he was deciding to take. And he had to take the
proper steps about it. She wouldn't appreciate a run-of-the-mill
approach from him about something so serious. It would take some
planning to make it impossible for her to refuse.

He looked down at her flushed, smiling face and knew she
meant the world to him. He wouldn't take losing her very lightly. And
if he did lose her, it would take a long time to get over the memory of
her.

Lacey thought the weekend with Rafe had gone well, in
spite of Dominick's appearance on the beach. Rafe had taken the
ex-boyfriend very well, she thought as she chewed on her drawing pencil
in her office later that week. He hadn't seemed the least bit
interested in what they had discussed, not the tiniest bit jealous.

She frowned. She didn't want to start playing games with
him, but it would have been nice to have noticed a twinge of jealousy.
Just the least little bit to know he cared enough about her not to want
other men stealing her away.

Maybe he knew her too well already. Maybe just from the
little time they had been together he had already guessed she was a
one-man woman. She might flirt with other men and play their games, but
she didn't follow through. The only time she followed through was when
she was dead serious, and that was how she had felt about Rafe right
from the beginning. Even at first she hadn't played her usual feminine
games with him; she'd been right up front about her feelings.

Surely he had taken her to enough of his parties by now to
know how she liked to play word games with other men. But he probably
had already guessed all he had to do was catch her eye across a crowded
room and she was ready to home to his side. Rafe was the only man she
wanted. He was the one she was going to leave the room with and who
would share her bed at night.

Some women might like the freedom of having affairs with
other men, but not Lacey. She liked a man who made it clear how much he
wanted to keep her. Dominick had given her too much freedom, because he
wanted justification for his own affairs. Lacey wanted possession
rather than permission.

Rafe could do with some improvement there, she decided,
but that was just because of her own insecurity about what she meant to
him. If he'd only tell her a little more often, or write a guidebook of
hand signals so she could identify his body language.

But all in all, Lacey thought, the weekend had been fun.
The time had flown past, and yet when she tried to tell the girls in
the office what they had done, all she could say was "We went to a
wedding, we ate, we walked on the beach." The girls had just looked at
each other and smiled, filling in all the blank hours Lacey hadn't
talked about. Lacey had just smiled with them, letting them think what
they liked.

What Rafe had neglected to tell Lacey until after they had
driven back to town late Sunday evening was that he had to leave again
on another business trip. When her spirits sank and she asked why he
hadn't told her sooner, he said, "That's why. Look at that pouting
face. I like the smiling one I spent the weekend with better."