Chances & Choices (4 page)

Julian's voice brought her back from the place to where she was fast disappearing. He was surprised to hear the calmness in his own voice considering the tumult of emotion her confidences betrayed
in him. "Sounds like you've got a bad case of it."

She looked at him quickly.
 "Love?"

"Lust."

Bringing her hand down, she straightened, staring at him open-mouthed.

"You're cruel."

He put his glass down, and standing, gave her a wry smile.  He appeared to display only a friendly interest but he found he had to walk away in order to combat the swift, seething jealousy flowing hotly through him at the image of Claire so passionately involved with another man.  He managed to keep his voice cool.

 
"No, just blunt."

"Lust can turn into love, can't it?"

He half-turned from the glass wall where he stood, his hands in his pockets, more in command after placing a distance between them to look back at her, shrugging in a seemingly unaffected manner. "I don't know.  I'm afraid that's beyond my experience."

"Are you saying you've never experienced lust?"
 If she could feel it she saw no reason why anyone else should be immune.

He laughed, her petulant indignation releasing some of his tension, he turned back to the glass before answering her.

"No.  I'm just saying it's never turned into love."

She put her own glass down and joined him.
 Neither spoke for a few minutes.  Claire found it comforting to be standing close beside him in the silence.  Finally, she asked.  "Julian, do you think I made the right decision?"

He turned her to face him, his answer guarded
.  "I can't advise you.  As you made a point of telling me earlier, you're a mature woman, you have to make your own decisions."

"I'm not asking for your advice, just your opinion."

He seemed disinclined to answer at first and then he told her.  "I think you made the right choice when you walked away."

Claire breathed a sigh of relief and laid her cheek on his chest, not noticing his indrawn breath and the change her closeness brought about in his demeanour.

"I'm glad I'm back here, I always feel safe with you."

She felt his fingers at the back of her neck, and his other hand traced the curve of her body from under her arm to the flush of her hip.
 His feather light touch aroused a poignant emotion and she relaxed against him; Richard and New York far from her mind.  His breath was warm against her hair, causing an erotic sensation to ripple through her as his voice shifted the strands ever so slightly. When he spoke the timbre in his voice was deep, laced with longing.

"Has it ever occurred to you that your trust might be misplaced?"

He held her away from him and she did not have to look for the desire in his gaze, she felt it as it travelled leisurely over her body.  "You're not nineteen anymore.  You've grown into a very lovely and desirable woman."

Vaguely, she registered he was out by a year, but she did not correct him.
 Her arms moved unbidden by her mind to encircle his neck, her head tilted, lips softly parted.

Julian found he could not resist her invitation.

Her lips were soft and warm against his own.  He gathered her pliant body close, amazed at how easily she melted against him.  He trailed his lips across her cheek; slowly, before bending to the pulse at her throat, and the identity of her perfume became known to him.  Gardenias.

Claire could feel herself drifting, languorously, the touch of his lips against her skin like slow fire creeping through her veins.
 Her arms entwined themselves closer around him and her fingers crept up into the thickness of his hair.  She moved against him, loving the feel of his hard, muscled length.  It felt so good, so right, to be in his arms like this.  At that moment, Claire knew she wanted him.

He lifted his head,
his eyes glazed, his breathing ragged.  She smiled; pleased she could affect him this way.  Desire for her was plain in his eyes, and the mystery of the guarded expression she had caught him in over the years also became plain.  Her voice was soft, full of the knowledge of womanhood.

“I wasn't nineteen before I went to New York either, Julian."

He still held her close in his arms, the fingers of one hand playing idly along her back, debating on whether he should remove the pins from her hair now or wait to see it spill across his pillow as it had in his fantasy.  Her words brought him back to reality and to the knowledge that he had blown his cover.  His. Carefully. Guarded. Cover.

"No, you weren't."

"Why didn't you let me know?"

He expelled a long breath.
 "Because I wasn't interested in just an affair and you weren't ready for anything else.  Neither was I," he added almost as an afterthought.

Claire moved closer to him, provocatively.
 "And now?"

"Now?
 I think you should go to bed.  Alone."

She made a small moue of protest and reaching up kissed him.
 He didn't really mean it.  He was just giving her the chance to back out if she wanted.  But he did mean it.  Taking her head in his hands, he pulled her lips gently from his own.

"You're hurt right now, vulnerable.
 Going to bed with me might seem like a good idea, but it's not going to help."

She felt him slipping away from her, but she made one last effort.
 “Don't you want me?"

His voice was exasperated.
 "Of course, I want you!  Can't you tell?"

They were still locked together; yes, she could tell.

"Now go to bed before I take you down and throw you in the ocean to cool you off."

Not ready to give up, she moved against his aroused body.
 “Maybe you should take a dip yourself."

Letting go of her head, he reached to the side and slid back the glass door that was cleverly concealed in the wall, although Claire knew of its existence.
 Reluctantly, she withdrew her arms from around his neck.

"Oh, alright!"

She headed across the room to the steps that led to the hallway leading to the bedrooms.

"You’re no fun!"

From his stance beside the glass wall, Julian chuckled, amused at how easily her demeanour had changed from femme fatale to that of a petulant child.  He made the obvious answer to her comment.

"Stick around, one day I might let you find out how much fun I can be."

She stopped at the top of the few steps and posed against the corner, the provocative woman fully evident once more.

"Promises, promises."

And then, giving him a view of her exquisite back, she sashayed down the hallway, her every movement an invitation, delaying her entrance into the second bedroom to taunt him enticingly, "I guess I really am safe with you."  And then she disappeared backwards continuing her invitation.

Julian had one foot on the second step before he managed to halt.

In the bedroom, Claire stood, heart beating erratically and hopefully.  Her shoulders dropped resignedly when she heard the glass door slide and then close, even from this distance, sensing his presence leave the house.

Slowly she dressed for bed.
 He was probably right; she was still smarting from her experiences with Richard.  As she drifted off to sleep the erotic dreams that had disturbed her rest for the past week returned.  Only this night the eyes in her dreams were not blue, but green.

Julian stood on the raised deck off the kitchen, the rush of the surf accompanying his solitude.  Perhaps he should have gone after her.  He'd wanted to – he had
so, so
wanted to.  But she
was
vulnerable right now and he wasn’t about to betray a trust that had built over seven years for one night she might hold against him.  He hadn’t kept hold of his emotions for all this time just to fail in a moment of weakness, brought on, no doubt, by the fierce jealousy her confidences had aroused.  Nor was he willing to risk his feelings on what might simply be a casual night of ‘friends with benefits’ for her.

He never could do
casual sex.  He had tried and it always left a bad taste. Probably because his first experience had been so moving.  Susanna hadn't seemed to mind his inexperience, only surprised that at twenty-three he should be so, and he had been a fast learner.  The reasons for his inexperience were varied.  He put himself through college, parking cars, waiting tables - he hadn't had much time for a social life.  The girls he associated with didn't interest him a whole lot, although there were one or two he might have liked to see more of.  But he had stayed almost singularly free from feminine attractions, until the day Susanna Ainsley walked into the famous designing house where he was particularly lucky to find a position.

Sitting sketching at one of the drafting tables, he looked up.
 She was discussing with the head designer and he saw his superior indicate in his direction.  Susanna turned, giving him a better view of her.  He didn't recognise her as the star of many films, only as the woman whom he knew, instinctively, would change his life.  The two women covered the distance leisurely, but he had eyes only for Susanna, awed by the elegance and grace with which she moved.  She was so tiny and yet she had an overpowering presence.

The other woman made the introductions and he only nodded, unable yet to meet her eyes, too entranced to remember to stand.
 Susanna moved behind him, leaning over to view the preparatory sketch he was working on.  Through the material of his shirt, he felt her breasts brush against his back and suddenly he felt sick and heart-wrenchingly disappointed.

During his final college year there was one girl he was interested in.
 She worked at the same restaurant as him.  They dated a few times until she preferred the attentions of a more rugged, football type who also worked there.  He glanced over at them one night after closing time as they counted their tips at a table.  The owner noticed the direction of his gaze and leaned across from behind the bar where Julian was standing.

"Young girls, their tastes are so uncivilized.
  You should try older women, Julian, their tastes are more refined."  And she ran her long, lacquered nail suggestively across his chest. 

 
He moved away, but she only laughed.  "You should take advantage of it.  You might not have to work so hard then, at least, not waiting tables."

It had been his first, but not his last, indication of the sexual interest he inspired in wealthy, older women.

As he felt Susanna bending over him, he clenched the charcoal in his hand, snapping it, answering her musical voice in monosyllables, dreading to look up and see what he was sure would be there.  Then she touched his cheek softly and he turned, and what he saw in her eyes filled him with wonder.

As Claire stated, they were married in less than a month.
  Susanna ignoring her friends warnings, Andrea's the most voluble, saying life was too short to worry about such things.  And she had been right.  But then, she had known something he hadn't.  She was forty-nine when she died, forty-eight when she began to fade away in front of his eyes.

And now there was Claire.

She was so different from Susanna and he had come to love her differently as well.  He thought of her as just a kid at a first.  She was more poised and more mature than girls of her age, but he knew that in the ways of the world she was just as naive as he at a similar age.  When she turned out not to be the giggling teenager he expected when Andrea practically bullied him into escorting her to the charity ball, he was glad at that time to know someone he could take as an uncomplicated, undemanding escort to the functions his business required he attend.

When their acquaintance grew into friendship, it never occurred to him that he might come to be anything more than fond of her.
 He was never quite sure when his feelings began to change.  It must have happened subconsciously, before the day she came running out of the water to flop beside him on the beach in front of his house.  Lying down, she tossed away her long mane of hair and, handing him some suntan lotion, asked him to put it on her back.  Then, without so much as a trace of self-consciousness or coquetry, she un-hooked the back of her bikini to avoid strap marks.

He was thankful she kept her eyes closed throughout the procedure and afterwards he went for a swim to counteract the effect she was having on him.
 At the time, he told himself it was simply a natural reaction to a beautiful woman and didn't mean anything other than Claire had matured.

But as weeks passed, he knew it was more than that - he was in love with her.
 It wasn't the intense emotion Susanna had elicited, but it was love. She started to fill his thoughts more and more, he started to imagine a future and he began to notice how his sketches took on her appearance, how much his designs had changed over the past year.  Their cut now flattered the voluptuous figure and the colour and fabrics were attuned to the cool tones of Claire’s pristine beauty.