Storm the Author's Cut (19 page)

He shifted and as her weight came against his hard, male body, she felt his desire for her.

His hands caressed her back through the thick sweater she wore. She pressed herself against him, loving the feel of his chest against her breasts. When his hands slid under her sweater, she tightened her fingers in his hair and felt every inch of his body through her clothing, his kiss deeper as his hands heated the bare skin of her back.

Her fingers fumbled with the buttons on his shirt. Then his fingers found her breasts, her nipples, and her own hands trembled so that she could hardly feel the button she was trying to unfasten.

When the skin of his torso was bare to her touch he lifted her sweater and pulled it over her head.

"Yes," he said hoarsely. Then he cupped her breasts, lifting them in his hands, bending to place a soft kiss on the white flesh of each one.

She whispered to him, but she could hardly talk. Her hands were gripping the flesh of his chest, willing him to bend lower, to take a firm, rosy nipple into his mouth.

"Please," she gasped.

He spread her sweater and his jacket on the sand, making a bed for them. Then he took her in his arms again and drew her down with him, so that their bodies were together in the sand.

When Max came bounding back, she closed her eyes in pain. "Don't stop touching me." She might die if Luke took his hands away.

"Just wait—one minute." He bent over her and kissed her hard and deeply, holding her hips so that she could feel his need of her. When he released her and moved away, she would have waited forever for him.

She watched the shadow of him leading the dog away, talking softly. He was a strong man with a soft voice, and soft hands on her body. He was going to be her lover. She hadn't realized that until tonight, but it had been inevitable from the moment she first saw him. No man had ever stirred this fire in her with his touch. Knowing what it would be like in his arms, she could not walk away from him.

When he came back to her, Max was seated quietly in the distance.

"You look nice," he told her, though he couldn't have seen anything but a shadow of her. He didn't touch her at once, but lay beside her.

"Max won't stay there." She would be in Luke's arms again and Max would come bounding, nuzzling his head between them, wanting a pet or a stick thrown.

"He'll stay." Luke touched her hair, tucked a curl behind her ear. "He knows I have treats and he's a very patient dog." The breeze stirred and she felt the air move on her bare skin.

"Why did you come tonight?" She stroked the cleanly shaven heat of his cheek, traced down over his chest where the hairs curled on her fingers again. "For this?"

"This... and more."

"What do you want from me?"

"Everything."

"Everything?" She was cradled in his arms, looking up at him.

He said softy, "To love, honor and cherish, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health—yes, that's what I want, Laurie."

She pulled away from him. "It's not what I want, Luke."

"Are you sure?" He moved closer, touched her face gently. "Holding you in my arms, I would have said you never wanted to be apart from me."

"That's different. We can be lovers."

He laughed a little bitterly. "You only want my body?"

"My mother can paint the ocean so that you would swear the wave will crash down on you any moment. Her paintings can be strong, even frightening. You've heard of Marshall Galleries? Zach Marshall saw her work, wanted her to do a show in his gallery. She never did it, Luke. She stopped painting for my father. She dabbles now, still lifes and portraits of friends' children. She has a talent, could do marvelous things, but she deliberately stifled it all—because she loves my father. She says she's happy, says she has what she wants, but she's only half alive."

"You're not your mother. I'm not my father. We can love each other."

"Luke, I—I can't."

In the dark, she heard him put his shirt back on, walking away from her, going over to where Max sat quietly on the beach. She was left alone, cold, wanting to call him back to her, but unable to say anything.

He wanted too much.

She dressed and walked over to Luke and the dog. They walked back along the beach together, talking to Max rather than to each other. When they reached the house, Luke didn't come in with her. He got in his car and drove away, leaving her alone with Max.

She watched him go, terribly afraid he would not come back.

* * *

"It's hopeless," Nat groaned, looking over the latest applications they had received. "You'd think, with jobs so scarce—"

"Nat, we should reconsider Anna."

"Anna doesn't have the self-confidence."

"But she's got the voice and the listeners already like her. John can train her if anyone can. We could give the job to her on trial—or even tell her it's temporary, then see if she shapes up. Meanwhile, John could do some of the interviews—I could even do some."

"Plus handle Peter's job?"

Standing on my head, she thought, because she was coming to realize how little Peter had been doing. "I already do most of it."

He agreed in the end. There was little choice. Anna was thrilled. John started training her in earnest.

"She'll be fine," John assured Laurie after Anna's first week in the new job. "She's nervous, and interviewing is a skill she's got to learn, but she's smart and she's determined."

Laurie hoped he was right. She listened to the Noon Show and Island Time with a critical ear she'd suddenly developed, worried by her new responsibilities. Meanwhile, she started a slow, tactful campaign to liven up the disc jockeys' shows.

She was working harder than she ever had in the past. It was exciting, shaping the image the station presented to the listeners. It was a challenge and she loved a challenge.

But at night, when she drove home she always held her breath from the time she turned off the highway until she could see all the way to her house. Every night, she felt the same sick disappointment because Luke's vehicle wasn't there.

He wasn't going to come.

The house was so empty without him. There was only Max, and Max belonged to Luke as much as he did to Laurie. Her bell didn't ring often, but when it did she ran to the door, greeting her occasional guests with a sad smile that bewildered her mother and made Bev ask questions Laurie didn't want to answer.

She'd invited Luke to be her lover but he wanted more than she'd been willing to give. She didn't think it was like Luke to stay away out of pique, but night after night he didn't return.

Occasionally someone would mention his name so she learned that he'd begun organizing a volunteer rescue organization. She sent John out to interview Luke.

John came back with an interview, the first Luke had ever given the station. Of course, there was no reason for him to refuse now that his father knew where he was.

One day she saw him on the street. He smiled at her as if she were a chance acquaintance, then he turned away.

She threw herself into her work.

"You don't need to do it all in one month," Nat warned her. "Forty hours a week is all I ask."

But the nights were so empty. Didn't he miss her? How could he stay away from her so long? She walked the dog he had given her, walking to the beach each night, but not too far. She didn't want to miss the sound of a truck coming into her drive.

He'd done something to her house, sharing so much of it with her that she couldn't look into any of its corners without seeing him. The only place he hadn't been was upstairs, in the bedroom.

She kept expecting the loneliness to ease, the memories to dim. As the weeks went by, she realized that he was so much in her mind she'd never be free of him.

She'd shied away from any lasting commitment, afraid of her vulnerability to him. Now that he was gone, she realized how deeply he'd been a part of her from the start. The first time she'd recognized him as if from a forgotten intimacy. But she'd closed her eyes, afraid of losing herself, and he'd walked away.

While her personal life echoed with barrenness, her life at work blossomed. Listening to Anna, she caught new flashes of the girl's personality. John had started her on the easy interviews—the daily weatherman report and the police report. The nervousness was disappearing from her voice.

Anna was going to make it. Laurie still helped out John by tackling the tricky interviews herself, but soon Anna and John would be able to handle it on their own.

"But never
all
of it," she told Nat during one of their Friday meetings. "I want to keep my hand in—just the odd interview."

"The tricky ones—those are the ones you miss."

"You're right, but I'm also enjoying being the boss."

"You'll say it's none of my business, but the way you're going, you can't have any time for a private life. For a while, I thought—"

"What?"

"Lucas. I thought something might come of that."

"Why does something have to come of it? Are you one of those men who think a woman needs a man to make life worth living?"

He didn't answer at first, picking up a paper from his desk, After a moment he put it down again. "It's your own affair, Laurie, but I worry about you. I know you like the job, but in between, when you're not busy, you look pretty glum. And I've stopped hearing rumors of his truck outside your house every night."

Luke hadn't been to her house in weeks. She knew he was flying long hours, seldom stopping before dark. If Luke were her husband, he might fly late but he would come home to her every night.

"You're being stupid," Bev had told her when she tried to explain why Luke had left.

She knew she'd been right to run from the idea of marriage to Ken. He'd wanted a wife at home, mother for his children, mistress for his three-bedroom, split-level dream house with the two-car garage. It was, she realized, the image of a wife that her father was most comfortable with—the one she had grown up believing she should conform to.

With Luke—

He'd not only loved her, she realized, but he'd also
liked
the person she was. He had constantly demonstrated his interest in her activities, his respect for her intelligence. It was hard to imagine him smothering her, not wanting her to be her own person.

The thought of marriage to Luke had frightened her for another reason. From the moment they met, his affect on her had been so strong. If she were to let him get too close, she would be terribly vulnerable to him. He could hurt her so easily

"He stopped coming," she told Nat flatly. "There's not much I can do about that."

"Isn't there?"

Nat's words haunted her through the afternoon.

She talked to a lightkeeper's wife about a series of commentaries, helping her organize her ideas, arranging a voice test with John. Then she went out to talk to a fisherman who'd been involved in a near-collision with a government ferry.

No matter how many nights she waited, Luke wasn't going to come. She could sit and wait, or she could do something.

Waiting for him to come was easier. Lonely, but easier than walking up to him, telling him she needed him.

Telling him she loved him. That would be hard. Frightening, not being sure how he might take that kind of announcement. He hadn't come near her in a month. He might be having second thoughts about wanting her, loving her.

Was he staying away, waiting for her to make up her mind? Or had he given up on her?

Chapter 13

Laurie tossed in her bed until she saw the glow of dawn in the sky. Then she fell into a deep, troubled sleep, no decision made.

It was well into the morning when she woke, later than she had intended. She got up and showered, then made a breakfast she didn't want, talking to Max and feeding him a distasteful looking breakfast from a tin.

"Don't know how you can stand it, Max. Smells awful—looks awful." She sat down at the table. "Mind you, my fried eggs don't look so great, either."

Max was too busy wolfing down his breakfast to comment.

Max was good company, better than talking to the walls. She had a vision of herself ten years from now, fixing dinner for herself and the dog, living only for the hours at work—like Hilda McQuade, pretending an animal could substitute for human warmth.

If Luke hadn't walked away from her that last night on the beach, they would be lovers now. She'd imagined that often, especially nights as she went to bed alone.

A lover looked after your sexual needs, but she needed much more than that. She needed someone to share the breakfasts, the lunches—someone to share the sunsets and the joys, someone to come home to nights.

She wasn't sure, but one day she might want to have a child. She needed a partner, a father for her children.

Of course she wanted Luke as a lover, but the constant yearning she had felt since he walked away wasn't just for his body. She'd missed flying with him, talking with him, walking with him. Having him close in her... in her heart.

She wasn't sure where she would find Luke on a Saturday, but she found his truck the first place she looked—outside the QC air office.