* * * *
Paul eased his chair back from the table still laden with Thanksgiving dinner, even after seven people had spent the better part of two hours depleting its bounty, and let the conversation flow over him.
He’d started it off with a comment to Grady about the blonde he and Bette had seen him escorting the previous Friday night. Now he was content to listen to Grady try to explain his relationship with Randi, which with Grady consisted of the chase, one big weekend and a goodbye ranging from pleasant to sticky, depending on the woman.
Since Judi and Michael also knew Grady’s habits, the questions aimed at him were pointed enough to have him shifting in his seat and darting occasional looks at Nancy and James Monroe. Paul could practically read his mind; it was one thing for his friends to tease him about being a lady-killer, it was another to have the couple who’d been more like parents to him than his own get that impression.
It was an old game among them, and Paul usually served as ringleader, but today...today he felt too peaceful and too restless, too comfortable and too discontent.
He looked around the table, his mother at one end, Judi and Grady side by side, his father at the other end, then Michael, Bette and himself. His gaze lingered on Bette.
Elbows on the edge of the table, she rested her chin on her laced fingers, her eyes glinting blue humor as she listened to the interplay among the others. The urge to touch her pulled at him. If her hands had been free, he’d have taken one of them. Instead, he placed his palm, fingers spread wide, against the soft jade wool of her dress at the small of her back, remembering the sensation he’d experienced from the same gesture when he’d introduced her to his parents. He felt that now, and so much more.
She lifted her chin from her hands and turned to him, a half smile, half question in her eyes. He shook his head slightly, telling her he hadn’t been trying to draw her attention; he’d just needed to touch her.
But now, meeting her eyes, the need was for more than physical contact. It hit him often these days. The urge to give in to it was nearly as strong as the urge to yank back against it. Sometimes when he wanted to give in the most, he yanked back the hardest.
“Want to go for a walk?” he asked in a voice low enough that only Bette would hear.
“All right.”
He gave a brief excuse to the others as he and Bette rose. He thought the look his parents exchanged down the length of the table held a significance he wasn’t sure of, but all his mother said was to wear warm coats and not go far, since she’d be serving dessert a little later.
They walked in silence, covering blocks of his parents’ neighborhood, scuffing the final, sodden leaves out of their way and holding hands. They got by, just barely, without gloves by holding hands tightly, feeding off the warmth of where they joined.
“How’d you like to see my secret hideaway?”
She looked at him, with the gleam in her eyes he liked to tell himself he’d put there. “What self-respecting person could say no to a question like that?”
“Is that a yes?”
“Yes, that’s a yes.”
He started off at a jog, pulling her along. By the time they reached the driveway clogged with the cars belonging to him, Michael and Grady, they were both breathless with exertion and stifled laughter.
“Aren’t we going in?” she protested around gasps.
He continued leading her along the driveway, around the house. “Nope. My hideaway’s not in the house.”
At the garage, he drew her up an exterior stairway to a second story, then slipped a key into the heavy wooden door at the top, all without letting go of her hand.
“This is it,” he announced. He shut the door against the chilling wind, and glanced at the sheet-draped forms of furniture. “When Walter Mulholland owned the house, it was servants’ quarters. When I was a teenager, Mom and Dad let me make it my room most of the time. Now they close it up for the winter, drain the pipes and stuff. But back then, I’d stay here for all but the coldest nights of the year. It used to make me feel like I was independent, on my own.”
She glanced at him, but in the deepening gloom he couldn’t read the expression in her eyes. She wandered into the room, looking toward the kitchenette behind the counter that doubled as a table, taking in the wide bed, trailing fingers across the back of a love seat his mother had added when he took the old couch for his apartment. At the picture window, framing winter twilight, she turned. Her movement swirled the skirt of her dress, the same jade-green dress she’d worn to his office that first time when he’d fantasized about making love to her there, right on the black leather couch. He knew the reality now, and the fantasy seemed pale.
Against the light behind her, she was a shadowed outline. But, he realized with a sensation that was more pain than anything else he could identify, she was the most vital thing in his life.
“It must have been great for a teenager. Only in high school, and already the possessor of a wild bachelor pad.”
He knew she was teasing, but for once he didn’t want humor. He wanted her. Here and now, yes, but in other ways, too.
He crossed the room in quick, impatient strides and his mouth came down on hers with an urgency he still wasn’t quite used to, even after the weeks of experiencing it every time he touched her. Her arms came around his neck and her lips parted, and that opening of herself sent emotion swimming into his blood. The kiss deepened, ripened, eased, then gave way to another, and another.
Breathing hard, he pulled back only enough to murmur against her lips, “No. No wild bachelor pad. All the time I was in high school, I think the only other person who slept here was Grady.”
But he wanted her to. He wanted her beneath him in his bed—here, in his apartment, or wherever that bed was.
Now. And tomorrow. And the day after.
His need for her. He could feel it reeling him in, drawing him closer. He dropped his hands from her hair, took a half step back.
He said the first words that came to mind. “Poor Grady.”
“Poor Grady? Why? Because you all tease him unmercifully?” She seemed to speak automatically. Crossing her arms, she rubbed at her upper arms, as though the distance he’d put between them made her feel the cold.
He grinned, sure it didn’t hold enough true humor to fool anyone, least of all Bette. “Hell, no, he brings that on himself. I say poor Grady because he’s always running into these women who want to tie him down, when he just wants to have a good time.”
Bette’s hands stilled. “You think every woman has marriage in mind the minute she sees a man?”
“Some women. A certain type. They can’t help it. They think in terms of husband material. They immediately assess and project.” The same kind who always looked ahead. The kind who saw the present strictly as a training ground for the future. The kind who lived by five-year plans and appointment calendars. The kind who could get under your skin and inside your life until you wondered what you’d do if they ever left. The kind you chased even though you knew you shouldn’t. The kind you pushed away with unfair cracks, then prayed they’d stay.
He moved his head just enough to watch her.
She stared ahead a moment, then turned. “So, you think I’m that type?”
“How could I be talking about you when I was the cha—”
“You know one thing about types is they can change,” she went on, not heeding his answer. “They can meet someone totally unsuitable as a husband and still—” her eyes flitted from his, returning only when she’d found a word, a safe word, he thought, and wondered what he meant by that “—enjoy him, learn from him. They can start learning to live for the moment, have fun while there’s fun to be had and let the assessments project themselves right into oblivion.”
She was saying that was what had happened to her. He wasn’t sure he believed it. He wasn’t sure he wanted to believe it. What did she mean, ‘totally unsuitable as a husband’? And why the hell did that make him feel as if he w
anted to ram a fist into the wall?
“And one other thing.” She tapped a finger to his chest, with a strange half-sad smile on her lips. “You chased me, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember.” He remembered too much, felt the need for her too strongly. “But you know what they say: the man chases the woman until she turns around and catches him.’
He saw the hurt in her eyes, and regretted it instantly and deeply. Some part of him also welcomed it, because he knew it would make her retreat from him. And some part of him grieved for it, because it would make her retreat from him.
She turned away, but from the movement of her shoulders he knew she drew in two deep breaths. When she whirled back, the attack was a relief. Better to face that than her hurt.
“And heaven knows you wouldn’t want to be caught, would you, Paul? You wouldn’t want to marry and have a family, because that would be too much like being a grown-up wouldn’t it? And that would never do for Paul Monroe, the kid at heart.”
He slashed across the last bit of sarcasm. “So you’re saying I should follow in my parents’ footsteps, become another—”
“I’m not saying—”
“—family clone. Just like you are, docilely fulfilling someone else’s dreams—”
“I am not—”
“I won’t live my life by somebody else’s dreams, Bette. Not yours, not anybody’s.”
Silence stiffened around them, echoing with harsh words. The hurt was back in her eyes, dampening the anger. There was something else there, too, something that pulled at him at the same time he tried to hold it off.
“And what are your dreams, Paul?” Her soft voice didn’t push him away with challenge, but drew him to her in a way he couldn’t explain. “What dreams are you living your life by? What dreams, Paul?”
He stared at her. She drew her coat more tightly closed, then walked around him and headed for the door. He stood there a long time after it closed behind her.
He hadn’t answered her questions because he didn’t know the answers. Work? He liked it, but it wasn’t the most important thing in his life. Certainly not his dream. So what was? He liked his life all right, but not enough to satisfy him the next fifty years, or even the next five.
What are your dreams, Paul?
What scared him as he stood soaking the cold into his body like a punishment, was the possibility that he didn’t have any.
What scared him even more was the idea that he did have one—the one he’d never wanted to have.