Just One Night, Part 1: The Stranger (12 page)

“I’m getting married.”

“To a man you don’t love.”

“He’s the man I want.”

“What a seductive little liar you are.”

I lift my chin and strike him with a defiant glare. A flash of respect . . . I see it in his eyes . . . but then maybe it’s always there. Respect for me in those hazel eyes of his . . . but then it’s
not
for me. It’s for this woman he thinks I’m hiding from him. A woman I don’t want to be.

“I want Dave Beasley.”

“Do you?” His voice is gentle now but it’s impossible to miss the hint of sarcasm. “What exactly do you want him to do to you?”

“Don’t be crude.”

“Do you want him to keep you in line?”

I don’t answer. Robert is very close now. If he takes one more step forward, we’ll be touching.

But he doesn’t. Instead he circles me the same way he did in that Venetian hotel room.

“Do you want him to suppress your true nature? Keep you on the leash you made for yourself?”

“Shut up.” My whispered tone contradicts the meaning of the words. I feel him behind me although he still isn’t touching me.

“Do you want him to confine you? Are you afraid you won’t be able to do that job all by yourself?”

His breath tickles my ear as he moves to my right. I wait for him to complete the circle but he doesn’t. He just stands there at my side, facing me. If I lean in, just a little, the top of my head will touch his chin. My shoulder will touch his chest; my hand, his thigh.

I continue to stare straight ahead, thankful for my dark glasses. They mute the colors that are just a little too bright today.

“Look at my hand,” I say quietly.

He pauses, perplexed by what seems like an odd request. But then he sees it, lifts it up so the light hits it just so.

“He bought me a ruby,” I say as he studies the stone. “Not a diamond ring, a ruby.”

“Whose idea was that?”

Again I don’t answer.

“It was yours.” He says the words with the tone of pleasant surprise. And now he does reach out. He moves my hair away from my face. I don’t turn to look at him.

“You let the woman you’re trying to destroy pick your ring.”

“This isn’t Sybil. There is only one me.”

“Oh I know . . . and it’s you, the only true you, that I want. Not the facade who smiles sweetly and pretends that she’s some white rose . . . delicate, bland, weak.”

“Did you call me here for a business meeting, Mr. Dade?”

“I want to tear that facade away.” He lifts his hands and clutches at the air around my body as if he could literally pull away some invisible force field. “I want to throw it in the ocean where you’ll never be able to get your hands on it again. I don’t want you on that leash, Kasie. I don’t want to confine you, I don’t want to control you. I want to set you free.”

“Says the man who practically blackmailed me into boarding this boat.”

“Ah, yes. But that’s different. For now it seems I have to practically blackmail you to do what you want to do. I want you to do those things on your own. I want you to indulge your desires the way you indulge your ambition.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“If you did, you would be unstoppable.”

“I love him.”

He hesitates. He hadn’t seen that coming.

“I love him,” I say, louder this time.

“Ah,” he murmurs. “That lie is less alluring.”

“You had
sex
with me.” My voice is even, cold. “You know my body, you even know how to make it sing . . . but that’s just chemistry. Dave knows my past, he knows how I think. . . . You know my body, Mr. Dade. Dave knows
me.
”

“I doubt that.”

“He knows where I come from.”

“I’m sure. Just as I’m sure he knows where
he
wants you to go.”

“No. He wants what I want. Not because he’s trying to accommodate me but because
we
really do want the same things. That’s what makes us compatible. You’re the one pushing me. What you and I have . . . it’s just . . . just . . .”

“Chemistry,” Robert finishes for me.

He steps away, takes a seat on one of his deck chairs. He drinks his wine a little too fast. Is he nervous? It’s not an emotion I’ve ever associated with him before.

“Do you know what chemistry is?” he asks.

I shrug but in my mind I answer the question.

Chemistry is the sparks that ignite inside me when Mr. Dade’s fingers brush against my neck. It’s the quickening of my pulse when he kisses that same spot, tasting my salt, licking that delicate patch of skin. It’s the throbbing I feel between my legs when his hands travel from my shoulders to my breasts, to my stomach . . . lower. . . .

“It’s the study of atomic matter,” Robert says, pulling me out of my thoughts. “It’s the description of how different chemical elements react. But more importantly it’s the study of the makeup of those elements.”

“I think I should go.”

“In order for two elements to react to one another, they have to meet,” he continues. “They quickly latch on to and, in some truly primitive way, recognize the details of the other element that will lead to a chemical reaction.”

“I have no idea what you’re getting at.”

“We wouldn’t react to one another the way we do if we weren’t able to sense something fundamental about one another’s nature. When I saw you . . . when I touched you, I sensed that there was something in the very makeup of who you are that would cause me to react in ways that I simply wouldn’t,
couldn’t
react to others. We’re baking soda and vinegar, Diet Coke and Mentos—”

“Scotch and soda?”

He smiles at my unexpected contribution to his monologue.

“I don’t know that scotch and soda actually cause a chemical reaction.”

“Maybe not,” I admit. But now I’m thinking about the cool, mild sting of the scotch when he had dabbed it between my legs, I remember the taste of it on his tongue.

Chemistry.

“I love him,” I say again. The sun is getting higher in the sky. I feel it beating on my shoulders. A small bead of sweat rolls down from my hairline
. It’s the sun I’m reacting to.
I say the words to myself.
It’s the sun
 . . .
not the heat.

“I almost believe you,” he says. For a moment I think he’s hearing my thoughts as well as my words.

“You should believe me.” I brace myself, find my courage, and tear my eyes away from the horizon to meet his. “I have never lied to you.”

“But you lie to him.”

“I love him,” I explain. “Everyone lies to the people they love. They’re the only ones worth the effort.”

“Then you must love yourself very much.”

Something catches in my throat. I don’t know if it’s a giggle or a scream.

“Does Dave love this freckle as much as I do?” He stands again, puts his finger on the freckle that rests above the scoop neckline of my shirt, right where my breast begins to swell.

“Do you shiver when his hands slide to your waist, when his hands slip underneath the silky fabric of your top?” His hands are on my waist; his thumbs slide underneath the bottom of my shirt so that they now press into my flesh.

“Does he make you tremble when he pulls you to him.” His hands move to the small of my back and apply just enough pressure to move me forward, into him. “When he lifts you up.” I’m in his arms; my feet are lifted from the ground as I cling to him. “When he takes you—” He’s carrying me down into the cabin, through a kitchen, a living room, into a bedroom. . . .

And just as he predicted, I shiver.

He has left his words on the deck of his yacht. In the cabin there is just the sound of each one of our breaths mingling together to create a pressing but jagged rhythm. As he lowers me onto the bed, I forget. Dave, my work, my ideals . . .

 . . . and I remember . . . the kisses, the taste of him, the feeling of him inside me.

I exhale as my shirt falls to the floor; my bra isn’t far behind. I gather the blankets beneath me into my fist as he grazes his teeth over one nipple, then the next.

Some feelings are almost too strong. They can’t be harnessed. Some desires can do nothing short of overwhelm.

I arch my back as his hand slides up the inside of my thigh.

I can’t think. . . . I won’t think. . . . Just the quiet scent of his aftershave screams seduction to me now.

My pants are still on but they might as well not be. They offer no protection from the heat of his touch as he presses his hand into me.

His radio is on, playing softly through the speakers—classic rock; the genre fits him. He’s the grit of Jimmy Hendrix and the eerie mystery of Pink Floyd and the groovy elegance of the Doors.

He has the top button of my waistband undone; I feel my pants loosen as he pulls the zipper down and the air on my thighs as he pulls them off of me.

“Stairway to Heaven” is fading into something else . . . ah yes the Rolling Stones. It’s “Ruby Tuesday.”

Rubies.

My eyes open and suddenly I can see, not just the room around me but the path I’m on. I reach down and cover his hand with mine just as he’s about to pull my panties off of me.

He pauses, hoping that the gesture isn’t the stop sign he senses it is. But I keep his hand still, gripping it firmly, not with passion, but with resolve.

“Kasie,” he says, looking into my eyes.

“I love him,” I say. The boat sways ever so slightly; Mick Jagger croons good-bye to “Ruby Tuesday.” “I love him . . . and that’s not just a feeling, it’s a decision.”

“You’re choosing prison over the unknown.”

“We’re all in some kind of prison,” I point out. “But I can pick my cage, and the cage I’ll live in with Dave is gilded.”

And with that, I pull away, sit up, and reach for my bra, the remnants of his touch still warm on my breast, my body still aching for him; my devil is still pulling me toward him. . . .

But I’ve made my decision. This is not my place. Robert is right; he is the unknown. And I reject the adventure of discovery. Maybe my life with Dave really will be a sort of prison but it’s the Ritz-Carlton compared to the dingy prison of my guilt.

“Don’t go,” he says.

I whirl around. I’m still wearing nothing but my undergarments but I feel an invisible armor building up around me, shielding me from the attacks of temptation. “Why are you doing this?” I ask. “Why me? Is it that you want what you can’t have?”

“I thought . . . I hoped I could have you,” he says quietly. “Every taste of you intensifies the craving. Like the Turkish delight the White Witch gives to Edmund in Narnia. I just have to have more.”

“So that means you’re Edmund, a modern metaphor for Judas, and I’m the personification of evil.”

“No,” he says with a sad smile. He stands and carefully lifts my shirt and pants from where he dropped them on the floor, but he doesn’t hand them to me. Instead he holds them like they’re a treasure, or a last hope. “My metaphor isn’t holding up. Obviously what we have isn’t anything like a children’s fairytale. What we have is . . . darker, richer . . .”

“It isn’t right.”

“But it’s us.”

I shake my head, staring at the shirt in his hand. I could pull it from his grip but I’m not ready. I can’t bear the idea of being so aggressive and violent in this moment. He will never see me in any other form of undress again. I’m determined to make sure of that.

But I do want him to see me now. I want him to look at me one more time. I didn’t cherish that last touch; I didn’t predict my own fortitude. But I want to feel his eyes on me. I want that to be a memory I can fall back on when life gets so rough, fantasies become hard to conjure.

“You think you know what you want, but you don’t,” I whisper. “You think you want me but what you want is a string of stolen moments like this one. You think you see through my facade but you can’t see that the facade is as much a part of me as the wildness beneath. You don’t want me.”

“But you can get rid of the facade.”

“Don’t you get it?” I scream. Suddenly I’m not the Harvard-educated businesswoman, I’m not the fiancée of a young lawyer from an old family. I’m anger, desperation, frustration, unrequited passion.

“I don’t
want
to get rid of it!” I grit my teeth against the violence that’s welling up inside. “You’re asking me to toss aside my thick-soled shoes and walk barefoot by your side, but look down, Robert! The ground we’re walking on is covered with rusty nails! I want my protections. They
are
part of me! I love them more than I love the . . . the savagery of my underlying nature and I want a man who loves the part of me that I celebrate! Why can’t you see that?”

“Because I’m a savage,” he says simply. But his eyes are sad; there is no savagery on display.

“Then find yourself a woman raised by wolves. I was raised to be civilized.”

“This is your definition of civility?”

“We have business, Mr. Dade. Shall we get to it?”

He sighs, “Ruby Tuesday” is gone, and its absence adds a small chip in my resolve that I can ill afford. I hold out my hand.

“Give me my clothes.”

He hands them to me without any resistance.

“You and I, we’re not the good guys,” I say as I slip back into my pants. “We did something wrong.”

“If you do this,” he says, watching me carefully, “if you marry a man you don’t love, you will not only hurt me but you will damage yourself. And most importantly, you’ll
torture
him.”

I pause but only for a moment. “I’m doing what I need to do.” The floor is cold under my bare feet.

“I think if you listen to me for even five minutes, you’ll realize that you have choices.”

I look up at him. There’s so much he doesn’t know. So many secrets and skeletons. And I no longer know if I’m running away or being led to a fate. All I know is that I’m going to survive. It’s more than my sister was able to do.

He examines me; his hazel eyes draw me in as they always do. “There are things you want to tell me?” he asks.

I smile despite myself. No one has ever been able to read me so easily and I’ve known this man for less than two weeks.

He nods. “I’m going to go up to the deck, pour two glasses of wine. I hope that once you’ve dressed we can talk.”