Time After Time (19 page)

She shook her head. "I don't believe it." She met his gaze. "You did this because I said it was my favorite, didn't you?"

"I did," he admitted. "I've never claimed to be above resorting to bribery." With a smile of something close to satisfaction, he stared at her laughing face. "What ever happened to dear Cousin Alta?" he asked, placing the cake on the table.

"She's still perfect," Leah said in gloomy resignation. "And I still dislike her intensely. The only difference is that I've had to stop putting lizards down her panties. Alta is married and lives in Dallas now. Her family moved there when we were both in high school... the same high school," she added darkly.

When he handed her a huge piece of the cake, she used her index finger to scoop up a big blob of whipped cream. "Oh, that's wonderful," she breathed, her eyes closed. "And this is still my favorite."

"Did Alta give you a tough time in high school?"

"Only when I let her. Back then I was still jealous of her. She needed an extra room for all her clothes." She met his questioning glance. "In high school, clothes came right below boys on the top-ten list. Alta had both. And I will never forgive her for latching on

to Teddy Bowers. It was nothing less than blatant thievery."

He leaned his elbows on the table. "Was Teddy important?"

"Captain of the basketball team," she said, daring him not to be impressed. "It wasn't really the fact that she got Teddy; it was how she did it. Our group had planned an unofficial senior trip—it wasn't school-sponsored or anything—to Colorado for a week of skiing.
Everyone
knew he was going to ask me to go steady on that trip. He had been leading up to it for weeks. Then I tripped over my brother's skateboard and broke my ankle."

"And while you were recuperating Alta made off with Teddy," he said, his eyes sparkling with enjoyment.

"The little sneak promised to let him touch her breasts if he would give her his senior ring," she said with wide-eyed indignation.

"You weren't prepared to... uh... match that offer?"

"No!"
she said, then grinned. "To tell you the truth, I couldn't have even if I had wanted to—Alta is stacked. What I can't forgive is the way she rubbed it in for years afterward."

"It's a wonder it didn't put you right off skiing."

"It would take more than the loss of a skinny basketball player to do that," she said firmly. "I managed to make it to Aspen the next winter and probably had a much better time on my own."

"Aspen? That's where I used to ski. It's getting too crowded these days." He frowned. "Your senior year, you said?" She nodded. "That would have been... about nine years ago?"

"Almost exactly."

"I was still going there then. Let's see, nine years ago. That was the year they had the big jazz concert."

"That's right," she said eagerly. "That's another thing I regret about missing the trip. We had reservations at Holbiens, where they were holding the concert."

"You mean your group was there that week?" He looked surprised.

"Yes... why?"

He smiled. "That was the week I was there."

"You don't mean it," she said, her eyes sparkling. It was almost like running into an old school friend. "Where did you stay?"

"At a chalet not a quarter of a mile from Holbiens. Wait a minute," he said, frowning thoughtfully. "A group of kids... wearing blue baseball caps with orange letters."

"Those were my friends!" she said, her voice rising with excitement. "I can't believe it. Why on earth would you remember them?"

"They disrupted the concert by singing 'If you're not from Texas, you're pond scum' to the tune of 'Yankee Doodle,'" he said dryly. "How could I forget?"

She threw back her head and laughed. After a moment she tried to catch her breath, darting a look in his

direction. "I wrote the lyrics," she confessed, her lips twitching.

He groaned. "I should have known."

She leaned back, sighing. "Nine years. It doesn't seem like that long. I still can't believe you were there."

Paul glanced away. It hadn't occurred to her yet, he thought. If she hadn't broken her ankle, they would have met nine years ago. Before he met Diane. Before a meaningless marriage had dulled his emotional outlook. Maybe it was only a strange coincidence, but somehow he didn't think so.

"I cried the whole time they were gone," she said softly, shaking her head. "I never could understand that. I had been looking forward to the trip, but it wasn't a matter of life and death. It wasn't even Teddy. I had already decided to turn him down when he asked me to go steady." She frowned. "But I can't remember every crying so hard. There was a strange ache in me that wouldn't go away." She drew a deep breath. "I guess it was because I knew my childhood was almost over."

Paul didn't say anything. He couldn't. He was too wrapped up in memories. More than one night during that ski trip he had drifted in that strange place between waking and sleeping.. .and he could have sworn he heard someone crying. The minute he came fully awake it went away. He had forgotten about it until this moment.

Standing abruptly, he began to clear the dishes, willing his hands to stay steady. He felt Leah's gaze on

him, but didn't meet it. He was acting totally out of character, he told himself sternly. He had to pull himself together. But he couldn't do that with her watching his every move.

She stood. "Let me do that," she said. "You did the cooking."

"I'll do it," he said, his voice sharper than he had intended. Glancing at her, he said, "You're probably tired. Why don't you go to bed?"

Leah stared at his stiff features for a moment, her brow creased in bewilderment. She wasn't tired, but it was his house. If he wanted her to be tired, who was she to argue? And that was a dismissal if she had ever heard one.

"Well... yes, I guess I am ready for bed." She hesitated, waiting for him to say something, to do something. Anything. But he simply continued clearing the table. "Good night," she said stiffly, and turned away.

In the small bedroom she slowly took off her clothes and slipped into her gown, then got into bed.

Thirty minutes later she sat up abruptly. This was crazy. Why should she let him get to her like this?

Because I love him.

No, she told herself firmly. She didn't love him, she loved the man she had met in her dreams. She loved that part of Paul that he would never allow anyone to see. It was there; she knew it was there. But it was guarded by a wall so strong that it could never be torn down.

There would be nothing but pain for her if she allowed her love for him to flourish. She had to cut the

living emotion out of her heart and mind before it began to grow. Then she would be safe again.

She couldn't let him play with her emotions the way he had been doing since the minute they had discovered they were having the same dreams. He had said he wanted her to get used to him, but that wasn't what he had in mind at all. He intended to tease her with false glimpses of a softer side until she was willing to go down on her knees to reach that part of him.

Well, it wouldn't work, she decided, raising her chin. She refused to play his game. She would take things into her own hands and break the spell the dreams had cast on her. And she would do it now, before he had a chance to hurt her.

She slipped from the bed and walked to the door. Without giving herself time to back out, she moved into the lounge. But it was empty, and so was his bedroom.

When she began to tremble in relief, she clenched her fists and moved toward the kitchen.

Moonlight played on the wooden deck, turning the whole world silver. Paul was lying back in a lounger, his head turned away from her toward the desert. Her bare feet made no detectable sound as she moved, but seconds later he tensed and jerked his head in her direction.

He didn't speak. Not even when she sat beside him on the edge of the padded lounger. But as he stared at her, the flesh across his cheekbones tautened, and a muscle flickered at the corner of his mouth.

"I'm comfortable with you now," she said flatly. "There's no need for us to wait any longer."

Reaching out, she grasped his neck with strong, slender hands and leaned down, pressing her lips to his.

The moment they touched, he seemed to surge beneath her, as though something had exploded inside him. He dug his fingers into her shoulders and jerked her against him roughly. It was as though he had pulled a switch to release a dazzling, sensual current. He whispered words she couldn't hear as his lips moved across her face to her throat.

Shock widened her pupils, her senses flaming as she strove to reach for a distant sanity. She seemed to be in a state of hypersensitivity. The soft moonlight blinded her; the gentle night sounds echoed loudly in her ears; the silk gown scraped roughly against her flesh.

The intensity of her reaction caught Leah off guard. Quick, piercing stabs of sexual excitement shot through her body, and without a whimper the disciplined suppression of years disappeared without a trace. She lay beside him on the lounger, her mind completely given over to pleasure.

This wasn't the way it was supposed to be. She had sought him out for the Act, not this violent, compelling explosion of sensation. With Grady, her one and only experience, it had always been the Act. How could she have guessed that it could so different? So amazingly wonderful?

He framed her face with big, awkward hands, and his intense gaze penetrated her solid flesh, seeming to reach to the heart of her.

"Do you know?" he whispered hoarsely. "Do you have any idea how badly I want you? How many years I've wanted you?" He inhaled roughly. "You couldn't. It would scare the hell out of you if you did. It scares me."

A small sound escaped her, and against her volition, her face moved against his hands. How would those same hands feel on her breasts, on her thighs? she wondered. Instant, electrified heat shot through her body at the erotic thought.

As though he had once again intercepted her thoughts, a groan emerged from deep in his throat, and his fingers tangled roughly in her hair, bringing her lips back to his. He plunged his tongue into the sweet, moist cavern of her mouth in an act as intimate, as possessive, as the one they both desired. She wound her arms around his neck and returned the kiss with a hunger that quickly grew unmanageable.

His hands began moving feverishly over places that had been too long neglected. Seconds later he rolled with her in his arms until she was beneath him. Then, cupping her breast, he lowered his head and teased it with his tongue through the thin fabric.

"This is what I lie awake nights thinking of," he said in a grating whisper as his hand slipped intimately down the curve from her breast to her thigh. She heard his breath quicken, and it brought a pleasure beyond belief. "The feel of you. The taste of you.

The look on your face when you hurt to have me inside you."

She moaned, grasping his hard buttocks with shaking fingers as she surged upward. A harsh sound caught in his throat, and he thrust his knee between her thighs.

Oh, yes,
she thought frantically.
Yes.. .please.

Suddenly, without anything to warn her, he tensed, muttering unintelligible words under his breath. Then, as though moving against a dragging force, he pulled away from her and sat up on the edge of the lounger.

For a long time Leah merely lay there, shuddering in reaction. She focused on the sound of his harsh, irregular breathing as though it would somehow bring her back to sanity. When the effects finally began to recede, she moved to sit up, her hands clasped tightly in her lap as she waited for an explanation.

"Sorry," he said, breaking the strained silence. "I'm afraid I got a little carried away."

"That was the idea," she said, her voice as dull as her senses.

He shifted away from her, as though something about her disturbed him. "You got a hint just then of how badly I want you. So you'll understand that it's not easy for me to say this." He glanced at her. "It's all wrong," he said flatly. "Something just doesn't feel right."

Leah felt hysterical laughter rise in her throat and cut it off sharply. "I'm afraid this is all I've got," she said, shoving the disheveled hair from her face. "Which part of me is it that 'doesn't feel right'?"

His laugh was self-mocking, but also contained irritation and an emotion she couldn't identify. "Every part of the outside of you feels just exactly right... maybe too right."

"My insides are wrong?"

Her voice was openly flippant. It was the only way she knew to put distance between them, to control the fire in her body that still threatened to get out of hand.

"Don't be dense," he said tersely. "You know what I'm talking about. It's not the right time for this."

"As an excuse," she said slowly, "that ranks right up there with 'I've got a headache' and 'It's the wrong time of the month.'" She cautiously met his eyes. "I don't understand you. We came here to—" She broke off abruptly and glanced away from him in acute discomfort.

He smiled slightly. "You can't say it, can you? But right now, that's exactly what it would be. And that's why we can't let it go any farther tonight. Try to understand me—if I wanted a nice, friendly roll in the hay, there are hundreds of woman I could go to."