Snowflakes on the Sea (13 page)

Presently, he released her and set her back on her feet. She caught both thumbs under the top of his swim trunks and drew them down until he was as naked as she. Then, with gentle hands, she caressed him.

Nathan gasped with pleasure and stood with his feet planted wide apart so that he could be still more vulnerable to Mallory’s touch. The passion she saw in his taut features made her want him desperately.

When he could bear the sweet torment no longer, he lifted Mallory out of the hot tub, climbed out himself and tenderly pressed her down onto a thickly padded chaise longue. He placed her feet gently onto the tiled floor, one on one side of the chaise, and one on the other.

She gasped and arched her back as he caressed the silken vee at the junction of her thighs, trailed soft, warm kisses over her rib cage, her stomach, the tingling flesh beneath her breasts.

He nibbled at the sweet peak of one breast. “Tell me what you want, Mallory.”

She didn’t have the breath to answer him; her body was doing that without words. Her hips moved in rhythm with the delicious torment of his fingers, and her hands clutched desperately at the ebony richness of his hair.

He mounted her gently, entered her just far enough to tease. “Mallory,” he rumbled, his lips moist and commanding where her neck and shoulder met. “Tell me.”

“I—I want you to f-fill me—”

Her reward was a swift thrust of his hips as he plunged deep inside her, filling her, possessing her and yet, at the very same moment, surrendering. They moved as one person, both gasping words that made no sense.

Finally, Nathan lifted Mallory’s hips, so that his shaft stroked the very core of her womanhood as it entered and withdrew, entered and withdrew. And then she cried out, shuddering, as the crescendo of their loving convulsed her, took primitive pleasure in his echoing groan of total release.

When, at last, they had both caught their breath and drawn apart, albeit unwillingly, there was a timid knock at the door leading into the kitchen.

“What?” Nathan barked irritably, as Mallory blushed profusely and plunged back into the hot tub in search of her discarded swimsuit.

“L-lunch is ready,” dared Mrs. Jeffries meekly, from beyond the door.

Mallory began to giggle unaccountably as she struggled into her suit, and the sound softened the awesome tension in Nathan’s face and finally caused him to grin lopsidedly.

“We’ll have it in the master bedroom,” he replied, his eyes sparkling as he watched another blush rise in Mallory’s cheeks. At last clothed—if somewhat more scantily than she would have liked—Mallory found Nathan’s trunks and flung them at him furiously.

He caught them, but made no effort to put them on again. His grin widened as Mrs. Jeffries called out something and then went back to her duties.

Mallory bit her lower lip, annoyed with Nathan, annoyed with herself. “We’ll have it in the master bedroom!” she mimicked.

Nathan laughed. “No doubt we will.”

“I meant—oh, damn you—”

He arched one eyebrow. “Must be some kind of mating ritual,” he mused.

Mallory crossed her arms over her breasts and stood stubbornly in the middle of the hot tub. “What are you talking about?”

“The way we always fight—before and after making love. It must have
some
significance.”

“Why?” Mallory demanded sourly, her feet still firmly planted on the floor of the hot tub.

Idly Nathan pulled on his swim trunks, his eyes still full of mischievous musing. He slid easily into the bubbling, surging water again and approached her. “Why what?” he countered. “Why do our fights have significance, or why did I tell Mrs. Jeffries to serve lunch in the bedroom?”

Mallory retreated a step, wide-eyed and suddenly wary. “B-both, I guess,” she faltered, stalling.

He grinned, and advanced toward her cautiously. “I think we fight because when we make love we both become so much a part of the other person that it scares us. And I want lunch in the bedroom because I want you in the bedroom.”

Mallory trembled. There was much truth in what he’d said about their lovemaking; they were both strong willed people, both fierce individuals. And when their bodies joined in the throes of passion, she often felt as though she’d lost herself in the consuming fire, as though her separate identity had somehow been forged to his, creating a third person that neither of them really knew.

It wasn’t surprising, really, to find out that Nathan had felt the same way. But as he drew too near, she was again aware of his incredible power over her, and she stepped back once more. “I—I for one intend to eat my lunch,” she babbled inanely, trying to keep him at a distance. “I’m h-hungry and—”

He laughed, closed the space between them and caught her shoulders in strong, gentle hands. “Don’t worry, pumpkin—you can eat undisturbed. I have, after all, a vested interest in seeing that you keep up your strength.”

Just as he had probably intended her to, Mallory colored profusely. “Don’t you ever think about anything besides sex?”

“Only rarely,” he confessed in a gravelly tone that sent fresh desire stirring through her like warm butter. “Where you’re concerned, it’s a compulsion.”

In spite of everything, she laughed into his damp, strong shoulder; in spite of everything, she listened as he told her, in gruff, sensuous tones, all that he meant to do to her in his bed.

And where he led, she followed.

T
hey sat facing each other in the center of the huge, love-rumpled bed, Nathan clad only in a pair of cutoff jeans, Mallory wearing a lace-trimmed teddy that was, like the swimsuit, a remnant of some other visit to her husband’s house.

A dozen feet away, a fire crackled romantically on the hearth of a small, ornate ivory fireplace, and a new snow was drifting past the windows over the head of Nathan’s bed. Still dazed from the lovemaking that had consumed the whole afternoon, Mallory sighed with warm contentment.

“What do we do now?” she asked, stifling a yawn.

An evil light sparkled in Nathan’s dark eyes, but then he laughed at her sudden blush. “You’re as pink as that delectable bit of silk you’re wearing. What is that thing, anyway?”

Mallory laughed and scooted back a little, as though to withhold herself from this man who could take her whenever and wherever he pleased. “It’s a teddy—don’t you know anything?”

He grinned, and with a warm, exploring finger traced the snow-white lace edging Mallory’s bodice. “I know it drives me crazy. What I don’t know is whether I like it better on or off.”

“Lecher.”

Nathan tilted his head to one side and chuckled. His finger slipped with tantalizing prowess into the warm, shadowed cleft between her breasts, then coursed upward, slowly, along the satiny length of her neck to the supersensitive place beneath her right ear.

Mallory shivered, though she’d never been warmer in her life, and then glared at her husband. “Will you stop that, you sex fiend?”

He laughed, withdrew his tormenting hand and bounded suddenly off the bed. The light from the fire shifted and danced in fascinating patterns on the sun-browned, muscular expanse of his naked back as he went to a closet and began rummaging through a variety of items stacked on the top shelf. “All right,” he conceded in a teasing voice that set Mallory to wanting him all over again, “I am a man of my word. No sex for at least three hours.”

“That is so big of you,” Mallory retorted, somewhat petulantly, her eyes still fixed on the splendid play of the muscles in his back and his powerful thighs.

“Noble is my middle name,” he said.

“Albert is your middle name,” Mallory countered, an obnoxious grin curving her lips.

Nathan whirled from the shelf, a Monopoly box clutched in both hands, his face a mockery of outrage. “And if you ever tell, I’ll shave your mink jacket,” he threatened, approaching the bed with long, ominous strides.

“Rash words,” she shot back, reaching out and grabbing the game from his hands. “You forget how many charge cards I have.”

The bed sloped a little as Nathan returned to his former position, facing Mallory, his long legs crossed at the ankles, Indian-style, and opened the Monopoly box. “You have me there,” he said. “But Monopoly is another matter. I’m warning you, woman—if you buy Park Place and Boardwalk again and jam them with hotels, it’s over between us.”

Mallory smiled evilly and arched one eyebrow. “Is that so, fella?”

He rummaged through the little metal game pieces tucked into a nook in the box. “Furthermore,” he said, as though she hadn’t challenged him at all, “I want the race car this time, and that’s it.”

Mallory sighed with mock resignation and reached into the box to claim her personal favorite, the tiny Scottie dog. “Look out,” she said fiercely, and, within fifteen minutes, she owned both Boardwalk and Park Place.

“I’m having an underwear party,” Trish announced briskly, her voice warm with humor. “It’s this afternoon at two and you’d better be there, McKendrick.”

Mallory yawned into the telephone receiver and snuggled down into the warm vacancy on Nathan’s side of the bed. Hearing him singing in the shower, she smiled to herself. “Underwear?” she echoed, her mind still fogged by last night’s lovemaking.

“You rich people call it ‘lingerie,’ daahling,” Trish teased. “It’s that silky, sexy stuff you wear under your clothes.”

Mallory laughed, yawned again and stretched languidly in the warm bed. “Oh,
that,
” she said in the tones of one who suddenly understands a consuming mystery. “Isn’t this short notice for a party? I’m trying to conduct a reconciliation here, you know.”

As if on cue, Nathan came out of the master bath, wrapped in a precariously draped towel, the water from the shower beaded on his powerful shoulders, an evil grin on his face.

“Okay, so I didn’t give you two weeks and an engraved invitation,” Trish retorted. “Just be here, will you? I booked the thing so Candy Simpson could get a bathrobe for half price, and most of my guests are only coming because they think you’ll be here!”

Mallory gasped as Nathan tugged teasingly at the covers, revealing one sleep-warmed breast, and then circled the nipple with a wanton finger. “A—bathrobe—for—half price?”

Nathan replaced the exploring finger with his tongue, causing Mallory’s nipple to harden in eager surrender, and she moaned.

“What the devil’s going on over there?” Trish demanded, never in her life having been accused of subtlety.

Mallory arched her back and swallowed a contented purr as Nathan nibbled mercilessly at her breast. “It would serve you right if I told you, Trish Demming—”

“T-two o’clock!” Trish sputtered in an obvious rush of understanding. “Candy’s bathrobe is at stake!”

Nathan pulled the receiver from Mallory’s hand and replaced it without interrupting his other enterprise at all.

There was a very becoming blush rising in Trish’s cheeks as she opened her front door to Mallory that afternoon, but her blue eyes were sparkling with mischief. “How goes the reconciliation?” she whispered. “As if I needed to ask.”

Mallory laughed. “Despite repeated interruptions, it goes well,” she threw back.

Trish’s modestly furnished living room was filled with familiar faces, including Kate Sheridan’s.

“Did she give you that one about Candy Simpson’s bathrobe, too?” Kate demanded from the leather recliner where Alex usually sat.

Mallory flashed a look of mock suspicion at Trish and nodded. “Was it just a ploy to get us here?”

“Of course it was,” Trish confessed buoyantly. “Candy Simpson has more sense than the rest of us. She’s in Hawaii, lounging in the sun and sipping Mai Tais.”

Mallory shook her head as she shrugged out of her warm, snow-speckled jacket and thrust it into Trish’s hands. “You rat. I thought I was on a mission of mercy!”

“You
are,
” Trish imparted dramatically. “
I’m
the one who wants to get a bathrobe at half price!”

Despite the fact that she missed Nathan, despite the carefully veiled curiosity in the eyes of the half-dozen women in Trish’s living room, Mallory enjoyed the lingerie party immensely. It felt good, after the rush of taping the soap every day for so many months, to participate in something so ordinary and frivolous.

“Have you heard about Trish’s new business enterprise?” Kate Sheridan queried, once the party was over and she and Trish and Mallory sat alone in the Demming’s spacious kitchen, drinking coffee.

Mallory raised her eyebrows and assessed her younger friend with teasing interest. “Don’t tell me they’ve recruited you to sell underwear!”

Trish laughed, but her eyes were full of sparkling, earnest dreams. “I passed my real estate exam, Mall.”

Admiration and genuine pride caused Mallory to reach out and touch her friend’s arm. “Congratulations! Good heavens, I didn’t even know you were studying for it.”

Trish rolled her bright blue eyes. “It was a beast, but I managed. Starting next Monday, I’ll be talking the tourists into cozy island hideaways.”

“Great,” Mallory said, honestly delighted. There was only one real estate agency on the island, but they did a brisk business among the summer people. “Are you going to give Soundview Properties a run for their money?”

Trish shook her head. “Heck no, I’d have to be a broker to do that. I’m working for them.”

“Sensational. I’d like the honor of being your first client.”

Trish leaned forward, nearly spilling her coffee, and widened her eyes. “What?”

Mallory looked from Trish to Kate and grinned at the startled expressions playing in both their faces. “I want to sell my house,” she said bluntly.

Trish emitted an undignified whoop, and Kate beamed her approval.

“It’s about time,” observed the latter. “If I were married to a hunk like Nathan, I’d ride around in his hip pocket!”

Mallory laughed. “Kate Sheridan, I’m
shocked!
”

“That’s progress,” Kate retorted with tart good humor. “You’ve stepped up from stupid.”

“Thanks a lot!”

Trish giggled conspiratorially and hunched her shoulders beneath her pink velour shirt. “Mall, you were terrific this afternoon! Those women were positively
eaten up
with curiosity, but you didn’t give them one damned thing to talk about.”

“They’ll make things up to fill the void,” Mallory said somewhat ruefully, turning her empty coffee cup in one hand.

“Who cares?” Kate demanded. “They would anyway.”

Trish’s hand closed over Mallory’s, warm and reassuring. “I really think you’re doing the right thing, Mall. You love Nathan—I know you do.”

Mallory nodded distractedly; suddenly, it was as though Renee Parker had joined the women sitting around that homey table, and the glow of the afternoon just past was somewhat tarnished by her unseen presence.

“You and Nathan ought to go away somewhere,” Kate interjected quickly. “Now that he’s retiring—”

Mallory shook her head, drew a deep breath and forced a brave smile to her face. “We can’t—not yet, anyway. It would look as though we were running away. Besides, he still has that farewell concert in Seattle next month. If I know him, rehearsals will begin any minute.”

“After that, then,” Kate persisted, a small, worried frown creasing the space between her eyebrows.

Mallory shrugged. “I can’t think that far ahead. I still have an obligation to Brad, for one thing.”

“Brad!” Kate scoffed dismissively. “That creep is half your problem, if not all of it. Break your contract, Mallory, and see Alice Jackson over at the elementary school. They’re looking for substitute teachers to fill in whenever the regulars are sick.”

Mallory was gaping at Kate. “Break my contract? I can’t do that!”

“Why not?” Trish asked cautiously. “You said you didn’t want to act anymore.”

“Well, there is such a thing as loyalty, you know.” Mallory bridled stiffly. “A contract is a promise!”

“There are exceptions to every rule,” Kate said with staunch persistence. “And besides, I’ll lay odds that Brad Ranner is behind this paternity suit.”

Mallory was stunned; until that moment, she had placed all the blame for Renee Parker on Diane. “W-why would he do that?” she managed after a long, difficult pause.

Kate and Trish exchanged looks of exaggerated impatience before the younger of the two replied, “Mall, you dummy—Brad looks at you like you’re made of spun sugar! If he thought he could get Nathan out of the picture, he’d do anything.”

Mallory had known that Nathan was jealous of Brad Ranner, though she’d never understood why. Their relationship was harmless—almost like that of a brother and sister. And yet, Brad had been so outraged that she meant to quit the show—

But that was business, of course. She glared at Trish and Kate in turn and lifted her chin. “Diane Vincent got Renee to say those things about Nathan,” she said firmly. “Brad wouldn’t do a thing like that!”

“Wouldn’t he?” challenged Kate, who seldom interfered in the problems of other people. “Wake up, Mallory. I’ve seen him and Nathan together, and they look like two lions about to do battle over the same quarry.”

“Diane did it because Nathan fired her!” Mallory insisted, almost desperately.

“When was that?” Trish pressed. “Yesterday? The day before? It takes longer than that to arrange a lawsuit, Mallory—this thing has been in the works for weeks.”

“It could still have been Diane!”

Kate shrugged. “Maybe they arranged it together,” she said. “I wouldn’t put anything past that she-cat either. Just watch your step around Ranner, because he’s not what he seems to be.”

Mallory felt sudden, unaccountable tears smarting in her eyes. Why was it so important to her to blame Diane? Kate and Trish weren’t meddlers, and they were both extremely intelligent. Had they noticed something in Brad’s manner that she’d missed?

God, why did she have to think about Renee Parker and that stupid paternity suit, anyway?

Trish’s pretty face crumpled with shared pain and deep concern. Unceremoniously, she dragged her chair closer to Mallory’s and wrapped her friend in comforting arms. “I’m sorry, Mall. I should never have brought this up—”

Mallory sniffled, returned Trish’s hug and drew back a little. “It’s okay,” she said bravely, dashing away the tears on her face. “You’ll call me about putting the house on the market?”

Tears gleaming in her own eyes, Trish bit her lower lip and nodded.

Kate rose briskly from her chair. “Well, I’ve spent half of my next advance on lacy geegaws no man will ever see. I trust you earned your damned bathrobe!”

Both Trish and Mallory laughed, and the tension in that cozy room was broken, just as Kate had probably intended it to be. She laid a motherly hand on Mallory’s shoulder.

“Come on, Mrs. McKendrick—I’ll drive you home. If I know you, you walked over here.”

Trish pretended to be very busy gathering up the coffee cups and spoons on the table. “Blizzards don’t stop her. She has herself confused with the postal service. How does that go? ‘Neither snow nor sleet nor gloom of night—’”

“You pitiable innocent,” Kate broke in. “When was the last time you mailed anything?”

Mallory laughed. “Don’t let Kate disillusion you, Trish. She has a running war with the post office.”

Kate was shrugging into a heavy woolen sweater-coat. “Only because they deliver my manuscripts by skateboard. Let’s get out of here before I
really
get on my soapbox!”

Knowing Trish’s house as well as she knew her own, Mallory said goodbye and went off to find her jacket again. Kate was waiting in her car a few minutes later when she went outside.