Nan Ryan (24 page)

But in all those years with all those sophisticated women, he had never known the sweet yearning which was awakened in him by his very first glimpse of the young, beautiful, and totally innocent Gail Whitney. The trusting young girl who had become his wife.

Now that same sweet torture, that same burning desire was upon him again. He wanted the youthful, exquisite, virtuous Helen Courtney. He would find himself thinking of her in unguarded moments when she was out of his sight. At night as he lay awake in the hot darkness beside his sleeping son he thought of little else. He would see her clearly in his mind and that glorious vision aroused him. He wanted to make love to her. To make love to her in every way imaginable. To shock her and thrill her and please her. To look directly into her beautiful blue eyes while he took her to new heights of ecstasy.

He wanted to hold her naked in his arms. He wanted to feel her pale, satiny skin against his own hot flesh. He wanted to have her intimately close, so close that the womanly scent of her would make him dizzy with burning desire and fierce hunger. He wanted his name on her lips as he swept her away into an erotic euphoria.

He wanted to grab her up out of her garden again and spirit her away on Raider. To leave the farm and Charlie and Jolly and the hard work and the intrusive world far behind and forgotten. To find a lush hidden spot in the dense tropical growth below the bluffs where the two of them could shed all inhibitions along with their clothes and share the kind of joy known only to lovers.

Yes, he wanted Helen.

And he strongly suspected that the reason for Helen’s increasingly dour disposition had more to do with him than with the sultry summer heat. She too felt the strong, forceful pull of raw physical attraction. He was sure of it.

But she denied it. She was unwilling to admit, even to herself, that she was starved for affection. And she couldn’t possibly allow herself to admit that she could feel anything—even elemental lust—for a Yankee deserving only of her contempt and hatred.

Late July.

Another hot, steamy night on the eastern shore of Alabama’s Mobile Bay.

Kurt made no pretense of going to bed. What would be the use? Why bother lying down only to thrash about and risk waking Charlie?

A smile touched Kurt’s lips. Charlie had a new way of getting cool at bedtime. Jolly, naturally, had taught him.

“Want me to show you?” Charlie had asked Kurt.

“By all means.”

“Okay! Now watch me, Captain, watch me,” Charlie demanded. “Then … then … you can do it.”

Quick as a wink, Charlie had stripped off his hot nightshirt. Wearing only his brief underwear, he climbed into the bed, stretched out on his back, and reached for a saltshaker which he’d placed near him on the night table.

The shaker did not contain salt. It held water. Charlie generously sprinkled himself with the water, laughing as the cooling drops peppered his arms and legs and chest. Kurt laughed with him.

And when Charlie handed him the shaker, Kurt sprinkled his own chest and arms.

“Feels good,” Kurt said.

“Told you!” said Charlie.

“Yes, sir, I believe that’ll do the trick,” Kurt said, and blew out the lamp.

It didn’t do the trick.

He’d known all along that it wouldn’t. While Charlie was asleep almost as soon as the light went out, his father was not so fortunate. The droplets of water already evaporating, Kurt went outdoors, sat down on the stoop. He drew a deep, slow breath.

The night air was hot and humid. And fragrant with the heavy perfume of magnolias. Almost overpoweringly sensuous. The seductive potency of this semi-tropical place was intensified by the knowledge that Helen slept alone in the big darkened house. At his fingertips, yet out of reach.

Temptation he couldn’t touch.

Kurt ground his teeth. It was too easy to imagine himself on the gallery outside her open bedroom doors, slipping noiselessly inside. Getting into her bed. Making love to her in the sticky moist heat. Feeling her hot, damp body move sinuously against his own slippery sweat-drenched frame.

Kurt shot to his feet.

His hands clenching into tight fists at his sides, his belly involuntarily tightening, he started toward the backyard.

Sweltering, Helen lay awake in the seductive darkness. The still night air was heavy with heat and humidity. The almost overwhelmingly sweet scent of magnolias permeated her close stuffy bedroom. It was too hot to sleep. Her nightgown stuck to her body and her skin felt prickled and itchy. No breeze from the bay fluttered the limp curtains or stroked her burning skin.

She was miserable. So restless and uncomfortable she felt she couldn’t lie there for one more moment.

Adding to her misery was the knowledge that Kurt Northway lay sleeping in the quarters. Helen’s hot face grew hotter still as she imagined what it might be like to kiss him. It was not the first time she fantasized about it.

His was a marvelously masculine mouth and she had no doubt it could give a woman great pleasure. Would his kiss be soft or savage? Or an exciting combination of both? Suddenly she felt as if she had never wanted anything in her life as much as to be kissed by Kurt Northway.

No
, she breathed in fierce denial.
No, no. I didn’t mean it, Will, I didn’t mean it
.

Helen sat up and reached for the carved wooden box resting on her night table. Anxiously she withdrew the oval cameo locket and pressed her trembling lips to the tiny photograph inside. Then she sat there for a long time clasping the cameo containing Will’s picture to her breast.

But when she returned the locket to its resting place, another object on the night table caught her eye. A delicate mother-of-pearl hair barrette lay framed in a wedge of bright moonlight.

A half sob, half sigh escaped Helen’s lips as she reached for the gleaming hair clasp. Remembering the way Kurt had smiled the evening he had handed her the gift, Helen allowed her fingers to trace the configuration of the dainty barrette. Impulsively she swung a large section of her loose blond hair forward over her face, then pulled it back and secured it with the mother-of-pearl clasp.

She shut her eyes and shook her head, but it did no good. No matter how hard she squeezed her eyes shut or how desperately she tried to push the wicked thoughts of a Yankee’s kisses out of her mind, she still imagined the darkly handsome Kurt’s fiery lips covering her own.

Kurt kissing her. Kurt kissing her over and over again while she begged him to stop and hoped he never stopped.

Gritting her teeth, Helen jumped up from the bed.

Barefooted, wearing only her perspiration-dampened nightgown, she walked straight out the bedroom doors onto the moon-splashed gallery.

* * *

Kurt moved quietly, circling the darkened house. He crossed the front yard to the new bay stairway. Taking the steps two and three at a time, he anxiously descended the bluff down to the water.

There was the moon shining big and bright. The bay, stretched out before him, was silver and black. Kurt was unbuttoning his pants by the time his bare feet touched the small strip of sandy shoreline between the base of the bluff and the water’s edge. He hurried down the narrow stretch of beach, stopping when he reached an outcropping of vine-covered rocks twenty-five yards from the steps.

There he stripped down to the skin, nimbly climbed higher up the jutting boulders, and dived into the deep waters of the bay below.

He swam until his breath was short and his arms and legs ached and tingled with exhaustion. Then he turned and swam tiredly back to shore. He pulled himself up on the jagged rocks, dripping, naked. He stretched out on a smooth slanting pillar of stone to rest and catch his breath before getting dressed.

He lounged there on the rocks in the moonlight, looking out at the sparkling waters, the sky full of stars, the distant lights of Mobile twinkling far across the bay.

Head resting in his folded arms, he turned to look down at the silvery sands below. His head came up and his wet-lashed gaze widened when he saw her.…

Helen stepped down from the wooden stairway.

Kurt frantically grabbed his trousers and covered his groin. His first impulse was to call out to her, to start apologizing for his nakedness. Then he realized he was hidden from her view, out of sight above her. If he shouted he might frighten her. The best thing to do was to keep quiet and never let her know he was there.

With his eyes riveted on her, Kurt quickly saw she was in her nightgown and her feet were bare. Her glorious golden hair was brushed out loose around her shoulders, gleaming silver in the moonlight. She turned her head and the moonlight glinted on an object in her hair. Kurt’s heartbeat quickened when he realized it was the hair clasp he had given her.

From his vantage point on the rocks above, he stared at her, asking himself if any woman could really be that lovely, or was it only an illusion, the magic of the moonlight.

She walked across the sand toward the water’s edge and it dawned on him that her intent might be to take a cooling midnight swim. Anticipation rose as he watched her move gracefully toward the lapping waters of the bay.

When she stood directly at the water’s edge, she gathered her long white nightgown up to her pale thighs and Kurt’s heart hammered in his naked chest. Afraid she was going to strip the nightgown off, and equally afraid she wasn’t, he muttered under his breath, “Don’t. Don’t do it, lady. Please don’t do this to me.” In the very next breath he was begging, “Please, baby, please. Jesus, sweetheart, take that gown off. Take it off.”

Holding the gathered nightgown up with one hand, Helen waded out into the shallows. There was the immediate sound of her sharp intake of breath, and then a long sigh as if she had been suffering and had now found a measure of relief. She waded about, kicking at the water, while Kurt watched her, mesmerized. He blinked in shock when all at once she gave a girlish little yip, and, moving quickly out from shore, dived into the deeper water and began to swim.

Still wearing the white nightgown.

In seconds she came splashing back to shore. She walked out of the water and Kurt’s heart pounded. The saturated nightgown hid none of her feminine charms, only tended to accent them. Kurt stared shamelessly, eagerly taking in the miracle of her beautiful body.

Her breasts were firm and high. The nipples, taut from the cold of the water, pressed provocatively against the soggy fabric, as clearly visible as if she wore nothing. Her waist sank in to a breathtaking slenderness. And then that graceful swell outward to her flaring hips.

His heated gaze was helplessly pulled to the shadowy triangle between her pale thighs and he felt the blood thicken in his veins. She stood in the moonlight as if she had been placed there by the gods of love solely for his own personal pleasure.

She was facing him, with the brilliant moonlight striking her full on. Her wet golden hair spilled down around her shoulders, and with the thin batiste gown plastered to her lush body, she looked nakeder than naked.

The primitive thrill of it was hammering at his temples, beating in his blood, throbbing in his groin.

He knew what he did at this moment was crucial. He could go to her now, this minute, while she was undoubtedly vulnerable. Forcefully he could hold her, kiss her into submission, make love to her on the sand before she had time to realize the import of what she was doing.

If he did, it would either live on pleasantly in his memory. Or he would regret it forever.

While Kurt was agonizing over the fateful decision, Helen quietly turned and walked slowly away.

Saving herself from him.

Saving him from himself.

Saving them both from a fleeting ecstasy that would lead to lasting remorse.

Chapter Twenty-eight

H
elen stripped off the soaked nightgown and toweled herself dry. She pulled out the drawer of the bureau, but shut it without removing a clean nightgown. She climbed naked into bed and decided then and there that in the future she would have little or nothing to do with the Yankee.

There was no need for her to talk to him on a daily basis. No reason even to see him every day. The man worked well unsupervised. He didn’t need her to tell him what had to be done.

Furthermore, she would stop constantly stealing looks at him. She would never look at him. She was well aware that he rarely wore a shirt, so if the sight of him naked to the waist upset her, then the intelligent thing to do would be to
stop
looking.

So she would.

She wouldn’t talk to him. She wouldn’t look at him.

Except when it was absolutely necessary.

For the next few days Helen’s plan worked amazingly well. She stayed mostly inside, keeping herself busy giving every room in the old house a thorough cleaning. She spent an entire afternoon in the bedroom next to her own, the main guest room.

The guest room was spacious and bright and, just as in her bedroom, a pair of tall French doors opened out onto the wraparound gallery. Helen threw those doors open wide to give the room a needed airing.

She polished the woodwork and changed the bed linens. She kept the room ready for guests at all times, just as her Grandma Burke always had. Granny had told her, time and again, “Sweetums, remember that a proper Southern hostess must always be prepared to put up overnight guests. Anyone who comes for a visit should be invited to spend at least one night.”

When she’d finished her cleaning and the spotless room smelled pleasantly of lemon oil, Helen carefully plumped up a couple of shiny pink silk pillows which rested atop the pale blue velvet chaise lounge. Then she crossed to the high, canopied four-poster to tie back a loose panel of the fading blue velvet bed hangings.

After finishing the guest room, Helen tackled her own bedroom next door. Then the parlor and the kitchen. Finally the never-used dining hall with its impressive candle-and-glass chandelier and long dining table and massive rosewood sideboard where Grandma Burke’s fine china and crystal were stored.

Helen carefully polished the huge sideboard and the gilt-framed mirror mounted above it. Last she lovingly rubbed and buffed the long dining table at which no one had sat since Will went away to war.