Getting Some Of Her Own (3 page)

“Do you realize what's happening here?” he asked after a while. She did, but she didn't answer. “Did that champagne go to your head?” he asked her.

“I'm cold sober,” she told him, in a frank admission that she wanted him.

“So am I. I don't want to leave now, but I will if you tell me to go.”

“I want some more champagne.”

He tipped up her chin and stared into her eyes. “Don't you realize that I want you?”

With her gaze on his mouth, she wet her lips with the tip of her tongue, and he bent to them. She welcomed him with lips parted, took him in. No longer was it a matter of seducing him and using him for her own gain, to have one completely satisfying sexual experience before undergoing a surgical menopause at the age of thirty-four. No longer was he merely a tool, a means of achieving a coveted goal.

Tall, handsome, trim, intelligent, educated, wealthy, charismatic and sophisticated, Lucas Hamilton was precisely what a woman wanted in a man. But in that evening, she had discovered strength in him, compassion, and a vulnerability that ignited in her a need to nurture him. Her arms gripped his shoulders, and he tightened his hold on her until her nipples hardened against his chest.

He stopped the kiss. “Where do you sleep?” She lowered her gaze, lest he see the fear in her eyes. Suppose it didn't work. But in another ten days, it would be too late.

“Down the hall,” she murmured.

Minutes later, he stood looking down at her as she lay on her bed clothed only in the burnt-orange bikini panties and bra. “You are one beautiful woman. I wanted you the first time I saw you.” With that, he shed his clothes and was soon holding her tightly in his arms as if he thought she would escape. He surprised her with his sensitivity and gentleness, testing and adoring until she wanted to scream for him to join them. When at last he did, it was a homecoming. She didn't know whether the storm howled outside, in the bedroom or merely raged within her like nothing she had ever imagined. She hit bottom before he hurled her into the stratosphere and hung there with her until she thought her heart would stop.

Half an hour later, he raised his head from her breast, stared into her eyes for a second and then kissed her. But it was a kiss meant to soothe rather than to communicate, and she knew it. He separated them, and she turned on her side, away from him, overcome with emotion as tears trickled down her cheeks. She buried her face in the pillow to muffle her sobs, but she couldn't control the jerking motions of her body. His hands gripped her shoulders.

“My Lord! Are you crying? Look at me!” His voice carried an urgency and something akin to fear. Or was it concern? “I said look at me, Susan.” She forced herself to open her eyes and tried to force a smile, though she failed at the latter.

“Are you sorry?” he asked her.

“It isn't that. It's . . . I didn't know I could feel like that. I'm . . . just overwhelmed.”

He exhaled deeply, clearly relieved. “I know what you mean.”

“Thank you for being so . . . so wonderful,” she whispered and hugged him.

He kissed her quickly, almost perfunctorily, rolled over and locked his hands behind his head. “This is a night I'll never forget, Susan, and I have a feeling that you won't either. I have a thousand questions, but I'm not going to ask any of them, because I don't want to spoil this for either of us.”

“I have questions, too, Lucas, but they're questions that I have to ask myself.”

“I don't doubt it. Will you be upset if I leave? I need to come to terms with this, and I can't do that unless I'm alone.”

“No. I want you to know that I enjoyed every minute we've been together, and that I don't regret anything.”

“I hope you feel that way when you wake up tomorrow morning. I've enjoyed being with you, and I mean that. I'll let myself out.”

When she heard the door close, she got out of bed, locked the door and went into the living room to clear the coffee table, but discovered that he had done that. In the kitchen, she found that he put the plates, forks and glasses in the sink and the remainder of the pie in the refrigerator. She poured a full glass of wine, went into the living room and sat down.

She got what she wanted, but would she be able to live with it? How was she going to reside in Woodmore, see that man and know he thought her different from the woman she was, that his estimation of her would likely be unflattering. He'd said nothing about seeing her again, and he probably wouldn't because he had promised nothing. And she would rather not see him. What on earth had she been thinking? She gulped down the wine, showered and went to bed. Would she have been better off not knowing how a thorough loving made a woman feel?

 

 

When Lucas stepped outside the four-unit apartment building in which Susan lived, he turned, locked his hands to his hips and gazed up at her windows. He didn't expect to see her at one; he needed to assure himself that he'd been there, that he was not hallucinating, that he'd eaten that meal and then had the most satisfying sexual experience that he could recall. He walked up Eighth Street East to his car, got in it and drove to his home facing Pine Tree Park on Parkway Street. But he didn't want to go inside where, alone and cloistered within familiar walls, events of the preceding four hours would take over his mind and emotions. After putting the car in the garage, he walked around to the back of the house and sat on the deck.

Lucas regarded himself as a careful, cautious man who did not act impulsively, and he could find no reason or excuse for having allowed Susan Pettiford to seduce him. She attracted him, but she didn't bowl him over. He shook his head as if in wonder. What was more, she had planned to seduce him, and by the time she served that stupefying pie, he suspected as much. Still, like a lemming bound for the sea, he'd let himself coast right into it. A woman with her looks could find an eligible man any day, so why had she done that with a man she'd seen once and rejected summarily?

He got up and leaned against a post. Something was rotten in Denmark. He'd hardly gotten inside of her when he realized she had far less experience than a man would expect of a woman her age. Thank God he'd had the presence of mind to use a condom. Shivers raced through him. He hadn't remembered to examine the condom afterwards to determine whether it broke. He flexed his right shoulder in a quick shrug. Even though he didn't know her, he doubted a woman as accomplished and as proud as she would trick a man into impregnating her. But you never could tell. What was her game?

The dilemma would remain with him for a long time, he knew, because he always sought to understand himself and the events in his life. He unlocked the back door and went inside. What on earth had he been thinking? He didn't have one-night stands with women like Susan.

“That was stupid, and it's over,” he said to himself as he headed up the stairs. “No more of that for me.” He stripped and got into the shower. “But she sure is one hell of a lover!”

Ever cautious, he called his friend, Mark, the next morning. “Tell me something about Susan Pettiford.” To his mind, the request was a reasonable one, since Mark invited him to his wife's birthday party expressly to meet Susan.

Mark's laughter didn't console Lucas. “What about her? You can see as well as I can, man,” he said. “All I know is that as executor of her aunt's estate, I had to beg her to come down here and claim her inheritance. She didn't seem particularly interested in the house, car and bank account. Said she was used to making it on her own, that she liked her job and wasn't interested in moving from New York to a town in North Carolina. She finally agreed to come here and have a look at the place, and the strange thing is that the house and its location half a block from Wade Lake really got to her.”

“Does the will stipulate that she live here?”

“She has to live in the house for a year in order to inherit what, around here at least, is considered a sizeable estate.”

“That's a heck of a job she's got up there in New York.”

“I know, but I gather success comes at the expense of everything else. She stood on the back porch of the house, looking out at the lake, took a deep breath and said, ‘This is pure heaven. Imagine living in such a peaceful environment!' I wouldn't be surprised if she moved down here.”

Although that news revved his engine a bit, his head told him he'd be better off with as much distance as possible between the two of them. Hadn't old man libido kicked into action this morning the minute he awakened with her on his mind?

“You're interested? I thought the two of you didn't get on too well.”

“That was on the surface. I had dinner at her place last night. She's an elegant woman, to say the least.”

“That's the impression I got,” Mark said. “You coming to the club meeting next week?”

“Probably. Thanks.”

He hung up feeling that he knew little more about Susan Pettiford, the person, than he did before he called Mark. He didn't intend to get further involved with her, but it wasn't in his nature to leave a problem unsolved.

“I want another opinion,” Susan said to herself as she sat on a log by the lake near her late aunt's house. She threw a small rock in the water and watched the ripples spread outward. “Just like my life,” she said of the sinking pebble. “The doctor hands me some bad news and before you know it, I get in bed with a man I've seen once, a man who's given name I used for the first time only a couple of hours before I made love with him.” She pulled air through her teeth. “I must have been out of my mind.”

A smile crawled over her face. “But what a lover that guy is! Lord, that man is sweet as sugar.” She told herself to snap out of her lethargy and contact another of the experts on her list. She wanted to consult with Dr. Chasen in Baltimore, but she doubted he'd speak with her without a high-level referral. What the heck! She could try.

She needed a car, but she couldn't use the one her aunt left her unless and until she signed the papers declaring her intention to reside in that house for a year. Until then, she wouldn't even know the amount of money in her aunt's account.

Suddenly, her mind made up, she stood and headed back to her apartment to call Dr. Chasen. She promised herself that if Chasen said she had to have the operation, she would accept it.

An hour later, she called Mark, her lawyer, with the news that she'd be out of town for three days. “I'll be in Baltimore, Maryland, but I don't have a phone number where I can be reached.” From his hesitancy, she sensed that he wanted more information, but she didn't offer it.

She walked into Chasen's office the following Wednesday morning looking as well as a woman could look, with her mink coat, alligator shoes and bag heralding the presence of a successful businesswoman. And she knew she had his attention.

“You made this seem as if you were minutes away from death,” he said, shaking hands with her.

“What I'm facing amounts to death.”

“Oh, I wouldn't say that.”

After examining her, reading the de rigueur cat scans and MRIs that he'd ordered, he said, “There's no escaping it. You have a multitude of tumors inside and outside the uterus. It's best to get it over with as soon as possible. You are very anemic. Who's your surgeon?” She told him. “I'll send him my findings. It's a simple operation, and you should be up and about in a very short time.”

“How many children do you have, doctor?” she asked him.

“Why, three. Why?”

“I don't have any,” she said, looking him in the eye, “and even if I
am
up and about in a very short time, I'll never have any children. Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”

She turned and walked out before he could reply, and before she lost her poise. The cheerful smile on the secretary's face annoyed her, and she wrote the check for fifteen hundred dollars without speaking, turned and left.

Might as well go on and get it behind her. When she got home, she phoned
The Woodmore Times
, discontinued delivery of the daily paper, packed a few toilet articles and telephoned Mark. “I'll be away for maybe a month. When I get back, I'll let you know whether I'll sign for the house.”

“How can you be so lackadaisical about wealth that most people would consider a fortune?”

“I'm not weak brained, Mark. I'm deciding whether to change my life, and I have to consider the positives and negatives. I don't worship wealth. My aunt knew how I lived, and she offered me an opportunity to live a more normal, more satisfying life. I have some unfinished business in New York, and when I've taken care of it, I'll be back.”

“All right. Everything will be here when you return.”

 

 

Five weeks later, Susan walked into her apartment on Eighth Street East, healed after a successful surgery, prepared to begin life anew in Woodmore, North Carolina. Her boss at Yates and Crown had assured her that she could have her job back whenever she wanted it.

“I practically raised you in this business,” he said, “and I know what you can do. You come on back, but don't take forever.”

Susan thanked him, but she hoped she wouldn't need her old job. With no prospects of marriage and a family, she reckoned that she'd be better off in a small town where she could find real neighbors and friends who wanted more than a lift up the rungs of success. She had to get her business started and renovate the house she'd inherited. While perusing the want-ad section of
The Woodmore Times
, she saw an advertisement for volunteer tutors for disadvantaged children, and called the organization that placed it.

“We'll be glad to have anyone with a university degree, Ms. Pettiford,” the respondent told her. “Would you come in and fill out an application? Our semester begins in January, but we've lost a few tutors, and we'd like you to start at once.” Susan reported for work the following Monday afternoon and was assigned a group of second grade children with reading and spelling problems.

“What's your name?” she asked the shy little girl who sat far behind the eleven other children.

“Rudy,” she said in barely audible tones.

“Come up here with me, Rudy.” Snickers from the other children alerted her to the possibility that Rudy was a target of ridicule. She walked back to where the child sat, took her hand and walked with her to the front of the class. “Rudy, I'm going to tell a little story,” she said, “and then I want you to tell us one. Something you read, or you can make it up.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Susan made up a short tale about pigeons and then asked Rudy to tell her story. When Rudy had trouble beginning, Susan put an arm around the child. “Go ahead. I know you can do it.”

Rudy looked at her, and Susan smiled, praying that she hadn't made a mistake. “My story is about the dog that jumped over the fence and got lost,” Rudy said, and as she told the story to her hushed classmates, her confidence seemed to grow. When she finished, Susan applauded and Rudy's classmates joined in. Susan hugged the child, and a warm feeling flushed through her when the little girl smiled for the first time.

Now
, Susan thought,
I hope these children won't ridicule this child anymore.
As the children began to file out, she beckoned to a boy who hadn't joined those who made fun of Rudy. “You weren't unkind to Rudy,” she said to him. “Why did the others laugh at her?”

He hung his head. “I guess it's because she wears those funny old clothes, and the people she lives with aren't her parents. They get paid to keep her.”

“Hmmm. But the children were being mean to her.”

“Yes, ma'am. And she's kinda nice, too.”

“So are you. What's your name?”

“Nathan. Do you think I can learn to read better?”

“Yes, I do, Nathan, because I'm going to help you.”

For the first time since she learned that she had to have a hysterectomy, Susan had a feeling of well-being, and she walked out of the building with quick steps and a renewed sense of purpose. She hadn't known what to expect when she saw the old building that had served as Wade Elementary School.

“At least I'll be too busy to moan over what can't be helped.”

The next day, Susan looked at three sites as a potential location for her decorating business and, in the process, discovered that Woodmore already had one interior decorator. But she also learned that, because of his volatile temperament, Jay Weeks, the decorator, probably wouldn't present serious competition. Besides, she planned to introduce herself and make him a friend. She rented space on the second floor of a four-story building at 131 Eighth Street West and considered herself fortunate in finding a good address.

She needed an architect, and a good one who she could trust, but she didn't want to contact the only one she knew. Nor did she want to ask Mark for a reference, for he would want to know why she didn't ask Lucas. After stewing over the matter for a time, she told herself that it was business, that she wasn't proposing anything personal. The next day, exasperated at herself for wasting time, she phoned Lucas and asked if he would organize her space, including provision for a toilet and small kitchen.

“Thanks for your confidence, Susan,” he said, without inquiring as to how she was or uttering other preliminaries of a personal nature.

This guy's a real piece of work,
she said to herself, though she didn't bother to note that she hadn't asked of his health and well-being, either.

“I'll have a look at it and see what I can come up with,” he said.

“Before we settle on anything, I'll need an estimate.”

“Of course. I . . . uh . . . I hope you've been well.”

That took her back a bit and brought to mind her own shortcoming in that respect. “I have. Thank you,” she said, her voice losing some of its deliberate stridency. “My shop is at 131 Eighth Street West on the second floor.”

“That's a good building and a very good business address. How's one-thirty this afternoon?”

“Good. I'll be there.” She hung up and sat down in the nearest chair, uncertain as to whether she had done the right thing. She didn't know another architect, so what was she to do?
Face it, girl, you didn't look for one. Subconsciously, you haven't let him go.
She looked toward the ceiling and closed her eyes. Lucas Hamilton, the man, was water down the drain. She needed an architect, and he was the best in Woodmore.

On her way to meet Lucas at what she envisioned as her shop, Susan stopped at 127 Eighth Street West and introduced herself to Jay Weeks. “I'm Susan Pettiford, and I'm about to open a decorating shop two doors up the street.” She extended her hand in greeting. “I wanted to meet you.”

Tall, lean, self-assured, good-looking and with a streak of gray at the front of his otherwise black hair, Jay Weeks gazed down at Susan for a few seconds before he let a smile alter the shape of his sensuous lips.

“Checking out the competition, eh? I heard about you. I have my shop here, but most of my clients are over in Danvers where the money is. I don't work for peanuts; I go for the white trade, so you needn't worry about me.”

Both of her eyebrows arched, but she quickly smiled. “I'm sure there's plenty for both of us. Since we're in the same business, I'm sure we'll have opportunities to compare notes and maybe even help each other. If you ever need burnt-orange and beige upholstery thread, I'll probably have it.”

To her surprise and pleasure, his laughter appeared genuine. “Right. And if you need something too weird for the local stores to carry, I'll probably have that. Let's have lunch sometime.”

“Thanks, Jay. I'd like lunch. Bye.”

As she rushed to her appointment with Lucas, she told herself she'd sort Jay Weeks out later.

She arrived to find him leaning against the door jamb. “Sorry if I've kept you waiting. Thank you for coming,” she said, feeling as if she were talking to someone she hadn't previously met. It was either that stilted conversation or greater intimacy, but she couldn't assert her softer, more feminine self with him for fear of sending him a deeper, unmistakable message. Appraising him from her peripheral view, she hadn't remembered that he was such a big man, but why should she have; she had tried to blot him from her memory.

He stepped aside while she unlocked the door. “I had lunch nearby, so I got here early,” he said. Gazing around even as he walked into the vast room, he began moving slowly from corner to corner, paused at the window on the street side and looked out.

“You need a private office, a showroom that takes advantage of this big window, a toilet, storage space with built-in shelves and cabinets, and a small kitchen. I propose the following.”

She stared at him as he outlined his idea. The man had been there ten minutes and had envisaged a plan that suited her perfectly.

“I'll get you a contractor who ought to do what you want for two or three thousand.”

Shaking her head in wonder, she said, “So far very good, but what about your services?”

When he rubbed the back of his neck, she knew what was coming. “It'll take me all of half an hour to draw up the plans for this.” He took a rolled metal tape measure from his pocket, measured sections of the room, made some notes and winked at her. “Willis will divide the space floor to ceiling so that it resembles an apartment. That suit you?”

“Sure it does, but you haven't told me what you charge.”

“I'd be ashamed to charge for this, and I won't. Willis will charge you enough. I'll give him the plan, and he'll be in touch with you, or you may call him. I'll give you his number.”

When she appeared skeptical, he said, “Don't worry. I'll tell him it's urgent. His work is impeccable.”

“I can't imagine that you would recommend him if it wasn't. Thanks.”

As he handed her his card on which he'd written the phone number for W. L. Carter, contractor, his hand touched her, and she backed away quickly, bumping against the wall. He stared down at her, and she imagined that he heard the thundering of her heart. She didn't dare shift her gaze.

“Willis will call you tomorrow morning,” Lucas said in a voice that had suddenly become hoarse. “It's . . . been good to see you again.” He walked to the door, opened it and, as if remembering something, turned back to her. “What's the name of your business?”

“Pettiford Interiors, Inc.”

“There's a good sign maker in the Market Street promenade. Be seeing you.”

With nothing on which to sit, she leaned against the wall and inhaled deeply.
Was she going to come apart whenever the man came near her? God forbid that he should touch her. Well, what the hell! He wasn't exactly immune to her, either, and he showed it when she backed away from him, but that was small consolation. He had no place in her life
.