Summer Storm (7 page)

“That hurt.” He rubbed his side and glared at her reproachfully.

“You’re tough,” she answered even more sweetly. “You run along the tops of moving trains, you hang from cliffs, you punch out thugs, how can a little nudge in the side hurt you?”

“That was more than a nudge.”
He looked at her speculatively. “You’ve seen my movies.” His voice was soft, dangerously soft, and
the
glint in his dark eyes was more dangerous still.

Mary was absolutely furious with herself. “Yes,” she snapped. “I’ve seen your movies.”

“I should imagine,” put in the insinuating voice of Alfred Block, “that all the world has seen your movies, Chris. Especially that last little adventure film.
How
much money has it grossed?”

The two girls who were sunning themselves on the dock had been slowly moving their way ever since Kit had arrived. Hearing Alfred’s question, one of them eagerly volunteered an answer. “I read in
Variety
that it may eventually be the biggest-grossing movie ever.”

“Really?” Mary looked at the girl, glad of any excuse that would direct her attention away from Kit. “Has it done that well?”

“Oh, yes.” The young face glowed at Kit. She was a very pretty girl, golden brown from the sun, with long, sun-bleached hair and widely spaced green eyes.

He looked back at her with pleasure, his eyes going over the smooth expanse of tanned young skin. He turned back to Mary. “You’re going to be red as a lobster if you stay out too long in this sun.”

Devil, thought Mary, amused in spite of herself. She met his eyes and made a face. “I’m afraid you’re right.” She held out an arm and regarded it appraisingly. “It’s just turning nicely pink.” She leaned back in her chair. “However, before I go, what happened at the press conference?”

“I think I put to rest all their speculation about you and me, if that’s what you mean.”

“Yes, that’s what I mean. Will they—go away now?”

He shrugged. “Most of them.” He looked up suddenly and his eyes locked with hers. It was almost as if he had touched her. “You’ll be safe,” he said deeply.

She pushed herself to her feet. “Good,” she replied through a suddenly dry throat and knew, as she walked up the stairs from the lakefront lawn, that so long as he was around she wasn’t safe at all. She would simply have to keep out of his way, which considering the small size of the school and the fact that they took all their meals together, was not going to be easy. What she needed, she thought, was someone to act as a buffer between her and Kit. She thought about the various possibilities as she slowly climbed the hill that led to her cottage in the pines. Not Alfred Block—he was too nasty; not Frank Moore—-he was too vulnerable; not Eric Lindquist—he was too cocky. George. The name flashed into her brain and she smiled with satisfaction. Of course. He was very nice, intelligent, talented—and old and sophisticated enough not to think she meant more than she really did.

She arrived at her cottage and went in to shower and change for dinner in a suddenly confident frame of mind. Kit thought he was so damn irresistible— well she would show him. The stinker, she thought, as she blew her hair dry. I’ll fix him for coming here and putting me in this horrible position.

Mary put her plan into action at dinner. She made sure she entered the dining room with George, and it seemed very natural when she took a seat beside him at the table. During dinner she devoted almost her entire attention to his conversation, and under the heady spell of her blue eyes, he seemed to grow at least two inches.

Mary never flirted. Whenever she wanted to charm a man she simply sat quietly, looked beautiful, and listened. It was a devastating technique and had soothed the wounded breasts of many affronted male professors who had originally objected to the appointment of so young a woman to the faculty of their illustrious university.

Back in the recreation room she sat on a sofa, allowed George to bring her coffee, and for the first time that evening looked directly at Kit. He was standing against the great brick fireplace, holding a cup of coffee and he was, as always, surrounded by a crowd of girls. Across the shining blond and brown heads their eyes met. Mary, not a bad actress herself, produced a cool indifferent smile, leaned back and crossed her long and elegant legs. George returned with her coffee and she greeted him with a noticeably warmer smile.

Carolyn Nash, following the direction of Kit’s eyes, said,
“Dr. O’Connor sure surprised us this morning. She gave out a reading list as long as my arm. The worst part of it is, she seems to expect us to actually
do
the reading.”

Kit’s eyes came back to her pretty face.
“Of course she does.
Dr. O’Connor takes her job seriously.”

“Well, so do I. But my job is to play Ophelia.”

“You have Ophelia’s lines down letter perfect,” he said, “so you don’t need to spend time on them. Have you always been such a quick study?”

She blossomed under his attention and was about to answer when another girl, the sun-bleached girl from the lake, broke in. “You’re the one with the long part, Chris! The longest part Shakespeare ever wrote. I think it’s marvelous that you have so much of it down already.”

He replied absently and continued to stand there, islanded by adoring girls, his real attention somewhere else. Mary’s shoulder-length hair had drifted like black silk across the cushion she was leaning against; her relaxed, slender body in its green summer dress was half sitting, half reclining on the soft, cushiony sofa. She tipped back her head and laughed at something George Clark said to her. As Kit watched, Alfred Block drew up a chair next to Mary’s sofa and broke into the conversation. After five minutes the group was joined by Frank Moore.

Mary yawned daintily, put down her empty cup and rose. She shared a general smile among her admirers, made a remark Kit couldn’t hear, and moved to the door. Three men hurried to open it for her. She left, alone. Kit dropped his retinue and went after her.

She was going up the path through the pines that led to her cottage when he caught up with her. He didn’t say anything, just fell into step next to her and continued the uphill climb. Finally she could stand the silence no longer and said, “I don’t believe your way lies in this direction.”

At that he reached out and grasped her arm, forcing her to stop. They had come out of the woods by now and were on the paved road that ran along the front of the five summer cottages allotted to various members of the festival staff. The road was lit by a single light posted high on a wooden pole and he stopped her under its pale illumination. With hard fingers around her wrist he held her left hand up to the light. “You’re still wearing my ring,” he said. “You’re still my wife, and by God you’re going to act like it. Leave poor George alone. You’ll knock him right off his feet and you don’t want him. You’re only using him to teach me a lesson.”

He was perfectly right of course and his perceptiveness made her furious. She jerked her hand away from his. “Leave me alone,” she said in a trembling voice. “I was doing just fine until you came bulldozing your way back into my life. You knew I was going to be here when you came. If you don’t like what you see, then you’ll just have to lump it.”

She turned to leave him and he reached out and caught her once again, this time by the waist. She twisted against his grip, struggling to get away from him, and he pinned her arms behind her, holding her so that she faced him. Mary felt the brief impact of his body against hers and she stiffened. She stared up into his dark dark eyes. “What do you want. Kit?” Her voice sounded breathless and she hoped he would put it down to the struggle.

His eyes, darkly lashed and unfathomable, looked back at her. “You,” he said. “I want you.” They stayed like that for a long minute, their eyes locked, their bodies scarcely an inch apart. His eyes were unfathomable no longer; no woman with a single normal instinct could fail to recognize what was glimmering there now. Her eyes fell before that look.

“I thought that was it,” she said in a low voice. “When George told me you were here, I knew you had come to persecute me.”

“I don’t want to persecute you. Princess.” His voice was deeper than usual, dark and husky. He released her wrists and slid his hands up her bare arms to her shoulders. “I want you to come back to me.
Be my wife again. I do want you most damnably.” And he bent his head and kissed her.

It was like coming home again. It was that feeling that frightened her most, frightened her more than the flooding sweetness of her unplanned response. The feel of his arms around her, his body hard against hers, his mouth on her mouth . . . When she was with him like this it was the only time she stopped thinking and just felt.

But he hadn’t brought her quite that far yet. Some remnants of sanity still remained, enough at any rate to enable her to pull free of his embrace. “No,” she said, unsteadily but definitely. “No. We tried it once and it didn’t work. I’m not going to put myself through that hell again.”

He pushed his black hair back off his forehead. “You never gave me a chance. I was
not
having an affair with Jessica Corbel That was all media hype.”

She stared at him incredulously. “Are you serious? The yacht—the trip to Rome—you were alone with her all that time and you never made love to her? You can’t possibly expect me to believe that.”

“That was
after,”
he replied stubbornly. “After you told me you never wanted to see me again, after I wrote you two letters and never got an answer. Then I thought, hell, I might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. But while we were really married, I was faithful to you.”

“Faithful?” There was unmistakable bitterness in her voice. “Do you call it faithful to call once every two weeks and talk for three minutes?
Do you call it faithful to never even
attempt
to explain what was behind all the headlines. What the hell did you expect me to think?”

“I expected you to trust me. You never asked me about Jessica at all.”

“No.” She stepped away from him a little farther. “No. And I’m not asking now. Your private life has nothing to do with me any longer.”

“It’s that goddamn pride of yours,” he said savagely.

“Pride is about all you’ve left me, Kit!” she flashed back. “My pride and my job. It took me a long hard time to regain the one and to earn the other and I’m not risking either again.”

“You kissed me back just now,” he said. “You can’t pretend you’re indifferent to me, Mary.”

“We always did strike sparks from each other. It’s what got us married in the first place. But marriage is more than making love, Kit. You and I may be good at that part of it, but we were dismal failures at the rest.”

“We’re older now,” he said persuasively.

“I know, which is why I have the sense this time to say no and mean it.” His face looked as bleak as winter and she sighed. “It wasn’t all your fault, Kit. You’re right, I was too proud to ask you to explain, too proud to show you how hurt I was. Perhaps now I’d do things differently. But you can’t turn the clock back, Kit. We had our chance and we blew it. The people we were then don’t exist anymore.”

“I don’t believe that,” he said. “Mary . . .” There was the sound of laughter down the path. “Hell!” he said explosively under his breath.

She looked up at him sadly. “There really isn’t anything else to be said. And I would appreciate it if in future you had a thought for my reputation. What are people going to think when they meet you coming down the path from my cottage?”

“They won’t think a thing,” he replied and after a minute produced a faintly mocking grin. “I have the cottage next to yours.”

She did not get much sleep that night. Somehow she had not expected him to be so direct in his approach; she had not expected him to want her back as his wife. She had thought that, as always, he simply wanted to sleep with her.

As she lay awake into the small hours of the morning, however, the realization came to her that that was what he did want, that that was what marriage meant to him. It was not what it meant to her, however. She had grown up a great deal in the past four years and she knew that they had failed previously because both of them had been too self-absorbed to reach out of their own needs and desires to consider the needs and desires of the other. Kit had been so intent on his career that everything else, including her, had gone down before that drive like grass under a roller. He was so—single-minded. He always had been.

She would have to be the one to give in. If a marriage is to be successful, she thought, at least one partner must put it first. All those theories about men and women in equal partnership sounded lovely, but she had never seen it work successfully. One career had to give, one personality to yield. Particularly if there were children. You couldn’t have your cake and eat it too, she thought bleakly.

What it all came down to was that what he offered her wasn’t good enough. She loved him, she admitted that in the darkness and the privacy of her solitary bedroom; she would never feel for another man what she felt for him. She even understood why he was the way he was. He had always been on his own; his mother had died when he was very young and his father had remarried and then died a year later, leaving Kit in the care of an indifferent stepmother. He had grown up learning how to fend for himself and he had learned to be ruthless. Once he decided what he wanted, he went after it; and if anything came between him and his desire, he walked over it without rancor and without pity. It had been like that with the baby. And then with her.

Now he had decided he wanted her again. He wanted her to leave her home, her family and friends, the peaceful fulfillment of her work—and for what? To live a life she loathed and feared, where you couldn’t go out to dinner without being followed and photographed, where every shiver in your relationship was blazoned across the front pages of horrible newspapers, where there was no peace and no silence. And for what? For the nights that could make the universe shudder? But what of the days? And the long, lonely times when he was gone on location. And the other women, beautiful and available, always so tantalizingly within his reach?