He was leaning against the railing again, but he seemed to unfold in slow motion, coming up off the wrought iron muscle by muscle. As his ankles uncrossed, as his hand came out of his trouser pocket, as he pulled himself to his feet, his eyes shimmered down the length of Lee, and a smile of undisguised appreciation lifted his sculptured lips. When his dark eyes met her even darker ones, he said flat out, “You look absolutely sensational, Cherokee.”
His approval brought a sweet ripple of pride up her spine as she took in the crisp lapels of his navy blue suit.
“Thank you, Your Honor, so do you.” Did he ever! His white shirt set off the rusty hue of his face like a well-chosen matting about a painting, and she wondered how she could have been so naive as to have missed the truth about his heritage all this time. Yet from the first, she’d realized he didn’t look like any full-blooded Scandinavian she’d ever known. He’d had his fun with her . . . but now, studying him, she couldn’t help rejoicing at the final outcome. Yes, he was stunning, his silk tie knotted so flawlessly that it stood away from his collar band as if aroused.
At the thought she dropped her eyes and turned to fetch a tiny beaded purse.
When he’d seen her solicitously to her side of the car and started the engine, he turned to study her again. She met his gaze levelly, unconcerned that he was undoubtedly reading the admiration in her perusal, just as she was in his.
“Tonight it’s the American. I, too, keep my promises.”
“But it was supposed to be my treat.” She knew she couldn’t afford the American Restaurant.
“Oh, you’re wrong about that.”
“But—”
“It’s a company dinner, on the boss. I’ll write it off as a business expense.”
“Oh, in that case . . . the American it is.” But Lee felt far removed from business concerns at the moment. And as the evening progressed, that distance widened.
THEY approached the Crown Center by way of its ten-acre square of terraced lawns and fountains, passing the massive tent pavilion and the thirty-foot-high umbrellas beneath whose yellow peaks they’d lost and found each other last Saturday. Alexander Calder’s stabile “Shiva” loomed up before them, and minutes later they were entering the luxurious Westin Crown Center Hotel.
Its multilevel lobby was carved into a rocky hillside of natural limestone, creating a dramatic garden of tropical foliage and full grown trees through which tumbled a sixty-foot waterfall. The rushing water created a refreshing background music for hotel guests, shoppers from the adjacent Crown Center shops, and sightseers who sauntered along the elevated catwalks above the lobby.
Had Hans Christian Andersen been alive to dream up a fairy tale setting, he could not have invented any more compellingly romantic than that through which they passed, Lee thought. She found it difficult to keep her eyes from Sam, and when they found themselves the only two people on the elevator carrying them up to the restaurant, she gave in to the urge.
He was leaning against the left wall, she against the right. They studied each other wordlessly, caught up in a sense of impending intimacy. Horizons lay ahead for them—it seemed understood—which would change their relationship forever. The knowledge intensified the moment, though to all outward appearances they were as casual as before.
Lee’s senses seemed honed to a fine edge. She was keenly attuned to Sam’s familiar scent, to his expression which grew more and more thoughtful and sexually aware as the night wore on. Seated in the restaurant’s lofty expanse with chrome and mirrors at her elbow and Kansas City spread out before her, Lee watched cars follow the arteries leading northeast toward the heart of the city. Yet time and again her gaze was pulled back to Sam’s. As if her consciousness had been fine tuned, she absorbed every detail around her with acute perception—the soft hiss of bubbles in her stemglass; the sleek texture of pickled mushrooms from the toothpick Sam teasingly held toward her; the brush of his pant leg against her bare ankle under the table; the bite of woven caning against her bare shoulders as she relaxed in her bentwood chair; the heat of the flame from their Steak Diane as the waiter performed his culinary act; the sharp, tangy taste of broccoli, suddenly delectable when she’d never liked it before; the scent of starch in linen as she wiped her lips, which grew impatient for what now seemed a certainty; the sluggardly passage of time as Sam drew out their anticipation by ordering Cherries Jubilee; the flash of fire as a match was struck to liqueur; Sam’s lips, tipped up only slightly at the corner as he slipped a scarlet cherry from a spoon and gave her a glimpse of his tongue stroking the succulent sauce from it; the heat flooding her body at his wordless suggestion.
Lee lounged all willowy in her chair, but she noted how often Sam’s glance fell to the ruched line where her dress met her chest, then lower to the discernible shadows hinting of dusky, bare nipples within her silken bodice. Each time it happened her stomach tingled. But she lounged on, playing his waiting game with a restraint that keyed their sensuality to a higher pitch.
From the restaurant, across the square, to the car, and all the way home . . . he never touched her. Not with his hands. But his eyes were as tactile as the brush of warm flesh as they lingered on her. The city was dark, alive, waiting . . . just like Lee.
At the curb in front of her house the engine stopped and his car door opened, then he opened her door and waited for her to step out. Again they moved up the sidewalk, up the steps to the door without a word, without a touch.
She had left the outside light off. The shrubbery and overhanging roof created deep shadows. Yet she turned to him, knowing his face without seeing it.
“Would you like to come in for a drink?” She remembered his preference for dry martinis with pickled mushrooms and added nervously, “I . . . I don’t have any pickled mushrooms, but I do have olives.”
A long, blank pause followed before he replied succinctly, “No, I wouldn’t care for a drink or pickled mushrooms or olives.”
Her stomach trembled, and she drew in a deep breath before asking softly, “What, then?”
She sensed him leaning toward her, just short of touching her as he answered in a husky voice, “I want you, Cherokee . . . you know that.”
His answer sent her pulse pounding, and suddenly she didn’t know what to say. She stood there in the dark, her nostrils filled with his scent, knowing the searching look in his eyes, though she could not see them. Then his voice came again, soft but intense. “Don’t invite me in unless it’s for that.”
Still he didn’t touch her, and though she wanted him to, she knew that once he did there’d be no turning back.
“You must know I still have reservations about it,” she admitted shakily.
“Then why did you wear that dress tonight with nothing under it?”
He knew her better than she knew herself; it seemed foolish to deny it. She dropped her chin and admitted artlessly, “It was shameless of me, wasn’t it?” She sensed him smiling in the dark doorway.
“Are you testing me, Cherokee, to see how far you can go before I make a move?”
“No . . . I . . .” Her hands fluttered and her voice grew unsteady. “I’m just nervous.”
After a thoughtful silence, he mused, “You’re an enigma, you know that? I’ve seen you in action at a bid letting where there’s a good reason to be nervous, yet there you’re as unruffled as can be. Out in the tough business world you scrap and fight with the best of’em. But what happens to that confident woman when a man finds her attractive?” His voice went softer. “What do you have to be nervous about?”
Suddenly there were tens of answers Lee could have given, any one of which would have been enough to stop her. But she withheld them all, realizing it had been half her doing that they were here together on the brink of something that would be splendid, she was certain. She did want him, and complications always went along with that, thus she suppressed her doubts and asked in a wistful way he could not mistake, “Would you like to come in for nothing so simple as . . . as pickled
mushrooms or olives?”
In answer he reached out and gave her bare shoulder a brief squeeze that sent goosebumps down her arm.
“Give me your key,” he ordered quietly.
Her hand trembled as she forfeited it. It chinked into his hand and a moment later the door swung inward, then closed behind them, securing them in a blanket of blackness.
She came to a halt in the middle of the hall, her back to Sam as she clutched her tiny purse in both hands. Oh, it had been so different with that other man, the one whose name she could barely remember, who had come oh so briefly after Joel. But she hadn’t forgotten the sudden chill that had overcome her body and turned it unwilling at the last minute. What if that happened now? And what if . . . what if . . .
She ran a frenzied mental assessment of her body and found only its shortcomings—not only the stretch-marks but also the loss of firmness, the unmistakable contour of hips that were wider now, the few extra pounds she perhaps should have lost. . . and there was a single vein on . . .
Sam’s hands sought her waist in the dark, and his fingers spread wide on her ribs, pulling her against him as he pressed his mouth into the curve of her neck, riding it back along the warm silver chain, pushing her hair aside to kiss the nape of her neck.
“Cherokee,” he murmured, “you’re so tense. There’s no need to be.”
In the dark he found the purse she still clutched and pulled it from her fingers. She heard the soft thud as it landed on a carpeted step before he returned his attentions to her neck.
She released the breath she’d held captive for too long and forced the muscles of her neck to relax one by one as he nuzzled the warm hollow behind her ear until her head dropped forward, then to the side.
“How long has it been?” he asked with gruff tenderness.
She knew a moment of trepidation before answering honestly, “Three years.” Three long, empty years.
At her answer he circled her with both arms, just below her breasts, and she covered the sleeves of his suit jacket with her own arms and the backs of his hands with hers.
“You mean I’m the first since your husband?” he asked softly near her temple.
She swallowed thickly, then admitted, “Yes . . . no . . . well, almost.”
She felt him move as if to look down at her questioningly, but his arms remained as before, warm and secure about her midriff.
“Almost?”
“There was one other man. I was lonely and . . .” Again she swallowed, thinking he’d pull away if she admitted what had happened. “Well, I thought I could, but . . . when I changed my mind things got ugly.”
His arms tightened more firmly around her, and he rocked her soothingly a time or two. “Oh, Cherokee, can’t you feel that’s not going to happen to us?”
And suddenly she could. She relaxed against him as he wet the soft skin of her neck with the tip of his tongue and slipped a hand over her left breast, warm and resilient within the tissue-fine fabric of her dress. Shudders of pleasure made her skin prickle. Doubts fled magically. She no longer remembered that the skin he touched was not as firm as it had once been. She only reveled in how good it felt to be caressed again. She closed her eyes, and braved the question she, too, needed to have answered.
“How long has it been for you?”
His hand continued its gentle exploration even as he told her, “Three months.”
“With who?”
The hand stilled on her breast. “Does it matter?”
“If she still means something to you, it does.”
“She doesn’t.”
She relaxed even further, relieved more than she could say by his answer. The crepe dress seemed to have no more substance than a cobweb as he cupped his wide palms about the lower swell of both breasts and made the fabric slip seductively across her nipples, tempting them, making her insecurities retreat farther and farther, replacing them with the vast need to be touched again, fondled, loved.
“Oh, Cherokee, you feel so good,” he murmured against her naked shoulder, dropping his head forward and crushing her back against him.
“So do you.” She covered his hands and pressed them firmly against her breasts as if to absorb every nuance of tenderness. The wide palms moved beneath her hands, gentling and arousing at once, appeasing the need for quiet exploration. “Oh, Brown,” she admitted breathily, “I’ve needed this for so long.”
“I know,” came his gruff voice beside her ear. “We all do.” Then his fingertips familiarized themselves with the belled shapes of her nipples. He folded them between his thumbs and the edges of his hands, lifting her breasts at the same time, sending tiny tuggings of ache feathering along her nerves.
She hardly realized she’d sighed until his voice whispered in the hair above her ear, “That’s better, Cherokee . . . relax.”
And she was—oh, she was—for his hands seemed to stroke away her lingering misgivings, and the easy pace he’d set won her trust. His hands were very hard, both front and back, yet their touch was sensitive, and she made no effort to stop one from escaping her light hold. It slid over her stomach, where the fingers spread wide for a moment, then closed again before pressing into the hollow beside her hip. His touch became feather light as with a single fingertip he scribed a twining grapevine upon the mound of femininity within her silken skirt. He sent a perceptible shiver through her, for his movement over the crepe made it slip across equally silky undergarments until the sleek touch of her clothing sent ripples of sensuality up her spine. It made her powerfully aware of her own sexuality, this touch that was half caress, half tickle, and all arousal. She sensed him gauging her reaction, listening to the accelerated beat of her heart, feeling it beneath the palm that still pleasured her breast. At last he slipped his hand fully over the curve of her femininity, bringing her to know a wild rapture, a lush awakening.
He murmured her name—Lee, and sometimes Cherokee—kissing her ear, her jaw, her shoulder, as his hands rustled over her, learning her contours, then traveling once more up her stomach and sides until his thumbs hooked the elastic at the top of her dress, taking it down to her waist and freeing her breasts to his palms, which lingered only momentarily before one slipped low within her garments to touch her intimately for the first time. His voice was ragged as he uttered, “Oh, Cherokee, I’ve wanted this since the first night I saw you in that motel room.”
She smiled in the dark thinking back to that night, realizing she’d been fighting a losing battle ever since. “I . . . I tried not to think of you, but it . . . it was impossible after that.”
His touch drove the breath from her lungs and set her pulse thrumming, while behind her his body invited with its pressure, then with a faint side to side movement. But it was far easier to accept the first touch than bestow it. As if sensing her hesitancy, he rested his jaw against her temple and encouraged, “You know, you don’t have to ask permission if there’s anything you feel like doing.”
Was he teasing? Only a little, and in an engaging way that sent a new awareness through her body. Yet girlish uncertainty mingled with womanly yearning. His midsection pressed firmly against her backside, verifying the message in his words while she hesitated yet a moment longer.
Then he begged softly, “Please, Cherokee . . .”
At last she drew her arm back, circling behind him to rest upon the tail of his suit jacket. His hand fell still upon her body, and his breath beat harshly against her ear as he waited . . . waited.
It had been so long . . . so long. But during these moments of sweet expectation she realized this intimacy had almost been predestined, for she and Sam had felt that spark from the first, and since then they had revealed bits and pieces of each other in the hope that each would find something more substantial to bring to his act. And now it was here, and her turn had come.
Her hand moved tentatively between them, and Sam backed away, giving her space and the right to know him. Her heart was like a wild thing in her breast as she touched him for
the first time, a tentative caress that brought a strange, thick sound from his throat. She explored him through tailored gabardine until he lost the power to remain still beneath her fingers and ordered gruffly, “Turn around, Cherokee.” Suddenly she was spun about by her shoulders, and her arms were lifting while their open mouths met like a crashing of worlds. She pressed her willing body against his, circling his neck, losing her fingers in thick hair at the back of his head, and exploring the contour of his skull before she felt herself being lifted off her feet.
“Your shoes . . .” he ordered against her lips.
Her toes worked the straps off her heels, as first one clunk sounded behind her, then another. A moment later her bare feet rested again on the cool tile floor, and his palms slid within the elastic at her waist, passing along her lower back. Down went the skirt, and with it pantyhose and silky briefs, to form a pool of fabric at her feet. He encircled her with powerful arms, lifted her off the floor for a second time, and kicked the garments aside. Another drugging kiss stretched into an abandoned celebration of discovery while hands, mouths, and hips paid homage. When he lifted his head a long time later, he asked hoarsely, “How do you feel about undressing a man?”
Perhaps it was then that she realized she could easily fall in love with Sam Brown, with this sensitive man who made it all so easy and kissed away the last remaining doubt.
She smiled and replied throatily, “Turn me loose and I’ll show you.”
The pressure fell away, and she slipped her hands under his jacket. Before it hit the floor she was working the knot of his tie from side to side. It joined the jacket. As he unbuttoned his cuffs, his forearms softly brushed her breasts, and his voice came low and husky and certain. “We’re going to be good together, Cherokee. I just know it.”
At that moment she knew it too, and she reached for his shirttails and pulled them free of his trousers.
She did it all, all that he wanted of her, removing each article of clothing with a newfound sense of freedom. And when he too was naked and reaching, her hips were taken firmly against his once more. Her fingertips found his bare chest, and she raised up on tiptoe to settle her bare breasts securely against it, and he ran his palms over her back.