“Do what?” She straightened slowly.
His eyes bore into her. “Send that check. You didn’t lose a minute, did you? You must have had it in the mail that same afternoon.”
“Shouldn’t I have?”
“No. There was no need.”
“I thought there was. You had no cause to pick up the check, either for the inn or the battery. I’m not helpless. I can take care of myself!”
A muscle worked in his jaw. “Then it was a matter of principle?”
“Principle? I wasn’t thinking about principle. I simply saw it as my responsibility. It was kind of you to offer to pay, but I feel more comfortable this way. I wanted to take care of it myself”
“Ah. The independent woman. So that’s how you intend to live the rest of your life?” he challenged, and drawled, “All by yourself.?”
Chloe was startled by the turn of the conversation. “This is crazy,” she said. “You show up here, out of the blue, without so much as a civil hello, and start criticizing me? I don’t have to defend my lifestyle to you or anyone else!” She turned away, then turned right back, confused. “Why are you here, Ross? Did you come all the way from Park Avenue to call me out for repaying your loan? Little Compton is on the way to nowhere. We’re at the tip of a peninsula. So don’t tell me you were just passing through.”
“No.” His features had begun to relax, though his eyes remained clear and direct. “I wanted to see you.”
Chloe could deal with the angry Ross more easily than she could with the gentler one. Uncomfortable now, she bent for her towel and straightened holding it tight. “You could have called if you wanted to discuss the Rye Beach Complex. Nothing much will happen until the referendum in November. Unless, of course, you alter your proposal.” Satisfied with her minor dig, she began to mop her face and neck. Ross ignored the barb. “I’m not here on business. I came to see you.”
“That’s a mistake,” she whispered, hearing pain, feeling pain. He replied as softly. “Then again we differ in opinion.” He sighed. “Look, can we walk? Your house seemed pretty crowded. I’d like to talk.”
All too aware of a tingling inside, she shook her head, then tore her gaze from his and looked out to sea. “It’s not a good idea.”
“Just talk?”
“Fine, if it has to do with the complex. Anything else …”
“What are you afraid of?” he asked. “I see the same fear in you now that I saw two weeks ago. What is it?”
She shot him a chiding look that said You’re imagining it, I’m not afraid of a thing.
“Then what can be the harm in talking? What can be so awful about walking along the beach with me for a few minutes?” He tossed his dark head back toward the house. “You have a whole crew in there just waiting to come if you scream.”
“I won’t scream.” She spoke softly, blushed lightly. “It’s not my style.”
He studied her for what seemed an eternity. “Maybe that’s your problem,” he finally decided. “You’re too composed. Maybe you need a good yell and scream to let it all out.”
“Let what all out?”
He took her arm. “Come on. Let’s take a walk.” He pulled her gently into step beside him, and she went along. After all, what harm could come from a walk on the beach?
One fast glance at Ross supplied an answer. The magnetism was there in all its force, coming from him, tugging at her. If only they had never met before, if only they didn’t have a past, there might have been hope.
“What if,” he echoed her thoughts with uncanny precision, “we had never met before? Would you feel differently?”
“Maybe.” She clutched the ends of the towel that circled her neck. “Would you?” some inner voice made her ask.
“No.” There was no hesitancy in his response. “I saw a woman two weeks ago who interested me. I would be here regardless. It’s just…”
As Chloe waited for his voice to pick up again, their paths crisscrossed her earlier footprints. Ross easily measured his pace to hers. “It’s just what?” she prodded.
He stopped walking. She went a step farther, then turned to face him. He frowned, seeming deliberative. “It’s just that after what happened eleven years ago, I feel even more justified…”
Her voice rose, as it often did when she was distressed. “Are you saying you feel guilty so long after the fact? Is that why you’ve come? To ease some long-harbored guilt? Where were you then?” she cried. “Where were you when I-“
She cut herself off. For the very first time she wondered what might have happened had Ross been with her at the time of Crystal’s death. It had been late Saturday night, two days after Thanksgiving, when she and Crystal argued, Crystal raced off in her car, the accident happened. By that time Ross was on his way back to Africa. What if he had been with her through the ordeal? Would things have been different?
But he hadn’t been with her. There was no changing that fact. She had survived. She had survived. Not Crystal, though.
When she closed her eyes for a moment in search of composure, Ross took her arm and said a quick, “Over there. Those rocks. You should sit down.”
“I’m all right-“
“Then I want to sit down! Indulge me!” He led her to a jagged outcropping of rocks. When they were seated on side by side boulders, he said, “Okay. Why don’t you tell me about that night-and stop looking at me like I’m crazy. You know what I’m talking about. I know what I experienced that night. I’d like to hear what you did.”
“Oh, Ross.” She sighed wearily. “I don’t want to go into this.” She caught the graceful takeoff of a tern from the salt-soaked beach. “It’s too beautiful here to rehash the past.”
“The past had its moments of beauty, too.”
Her head snapped back, but the warmth of his gaze cut off the retort that might have come. Suddenly it seemed pointless to resist his request. It was just a matter of choosing the right words. “The past did have its moments. And, yes, they were beautiful.” There was a soft quality in her voice as she returned to that night.
Ross grasped the stone on either side of him. “Had you planned it to happen? When you came toward me from across that room, had you hoped that we’d end up in bed?”
“Beforehand?” She looked up in surprise. “No. I’d never done anything like that before. Oh, we dated plenty and went to our share of parties. But we had never, that is, neither of us had, ah, I mean, I had never..
.”
“I know.” He rescued her from her floundering, daring to touch her cheek with the back of his fingers. Instinctively she tipped her face toward his touch, then caught herself and righted her head.
“Were you sorry you did it?” His voice was low, urgent.
“No … Yes … I don’t know,” she finally ended in a whisper, tugging at the towel draped about her neck. “I can’t give you a simple yes or no. I’ve never regretted the act itself It was beautiful.”
“Then what is it about me that makes you so uncomfortable?”
The ensuing silence was rich with the sounds of the shore-the lapping of the waves, the cry of the gulls, the rustle of the breeze in the drying leaves of the wild honeysuckle. Each had the potential to soothe, yet Chloe remained tense.
“Seeing you,” she finally confessed, “brings back memories of a holiday weekend that was tragic for me.”
“Your sister’s death.”
Her eyes shot to his. “You knew?” And hadn’t tried to contact her?
The dark sheen of his hair captured the golden rays of the slow-setting sun. “Yes, I knew, but not until long after I’d returned to Africa. I didn’t feel then that it was my place to contact you.”
“Why not?” She didn’t understand that detachment. He was certainly persistent enough now.
“In the first place,” he began, “it was pitiful, how long after the fact I learned of it. Sammy wrote me the news in a letter the following spring.”
He seemed to hesitate. More quietly, he said, “It was only then that I’d had the guts to ask him about you.”
“But why?” she cried.
“Because you weren’t the only one to have afterthoughts of that night!
From what I could see I had seduced the virgin daughter of my host’s best friend. I was twenty-seven. You were eighteen. I should have known better. But the worst of it was that I was glad I hadn’t.” His voice gentled. “The memory of that night helped me through many a lonely night afterward.”
“Oh, Ross,” Chloe whispered, feeling a great longing inside. “I wish it hadn’t. It’s too late to go back.”
“I don’t want to go back. I want to go ahead. That’s why I’m here.”
Anguished, she looked down. “It’s no good. I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t? We’ve been through this before. Well,” he drew in a breath, “believe this. I may have been immature eleven years ago, running away from something that frightened me, but I won’t make the same mistake twice. It was fate that brought us together up at Rye Beach, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you get away. I’ve made it my business to find out every possible thing I could about you during the past two weeks. And I know what happened to Crystal.”
His words hung in the air. Her eyes begged him to say no more. She bolstered the plea with her low whisper. “Then you can understand why I can’t bear to think back on that time.”
“It was an accident, Chloe! It wasn’t your fault!”
“But she died.”
“And you lived, is that it? You can’t forgive yourself for that?”
She jumped to her feet. With her heart pounding a thunderous beat, she stared at him for an agonized moment before forcing her feet to move. Her steps were slow at first, then gained speed as the force of habit took over and she jogged toward safer ground.
With pitiful ease, Ross caught up. He caught her elbow, using her own momentum to bring her around. When she faced him at a full stop, he held her by both arms.
“I’m trying to be honest,” he said.
“But it hurts. Can’t you see that? It hurts!” She was consumed by it, a hurt that was alive and festering. He had to see it anywhere he looked.
“The only way the hurt will stop,” he chided gently, “is for you to put the past behind you.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Do you think I haven’t tried? Do you think I’ve spent the past eleven years purposely living with a ghost?”
**skip**”Maybe not, but you’ve done it. You haven’t resolved a thing in the eleven years, if that hurt in your eyes is for real. It’s your punishment, isn’t it? Your punishment for living.”
She shook her head and whispered, “No. That’s not true!”
“Not true?” he echoed in a voice strangely mellow. “Answer me one thing, Chloe. Have you been with another man since we were together?”
“That’s none of your bus-“
“It is so.” He took her face in his hands, correctly anticipating her attempt to look away. His touch was gentle but firm. “I was the first. It’s my brand that shaped you. How many others were there?”
“That’s vulgar!” she cried.
“Maybe. Answer the question.”
“I won’t. Are you jealous, jealous and guilt-ridden? Well, I don’t need either of those traits in the man in my life. I’m doing just fine withoutwithout-” Her limbs trembled.
Ross drew her against him, pressing her cheek to his chest, wrapping his arms around her back. “Without love?” he asked, so softly that she might not have heard him had the word not been on the tip of her tongue.
Incapable of speech for the moment, she simply breathed in the scent that was all male, all Ross. His heart beat steadily by her ear, gradually coaxing her own to slow. His arms enveloped her and lent her strength.
“I tried.” She spoke, unsteadily at first. “I dated. I still do.” It was easier not having to look at him. “I even tried to go to bed with one of them.”
She recalled the horror of the moment. “He decided I was frigid.”
A deep laugh broke from Ross’s throat, a laugh that was strangely hoarse. “That’s ridiculous,” he crooned into the warmth of her hair, but when he tipped her face up he felt her stiffen. “Oh, no, you don’t.” His mouth found hers.
She fought him then. Struggling to free herself from the band of his arms, she pushed against his chest, all the while trying to evade his lips, but he was stronger than she was. The more she squirmed, the more he steadied her. His lips stroked hers, demanding the kind of response that he alone knew she had in her.
When her physical strength waned, Chloe tried passivity. The last thing she wanted was a repeat of the night in New Hampshire or, worse, that fateful night back in New Orleans. She had no right, she told herself, no right!
“Come on, Chloe,” Ross growled against her lips. “Ease up.”
“Don’t-“
She shouldn’t have said anything. The tiny parting of her lips gave him the opening he needed, and then she didn’t have a chance. His tongue invaded her mouth, spreading its sweetness deep. She told herself that it was physical, that she could resist if she wanted to enough, but her body betrayed her. It swayed toward him, weak with wanting.
From an odd defense mechanism, her mind went blank. It was as though the battle between guilt and desire created a mental void. In that void there was nothing but Ross and his body, the lips that caressed her, arms that held her gently, legs that supported her. Out of that void came her response, slowly, surely, and Ross had won. Her lips moved against his, tasting, savoring. The corners of his mouth, his firm lips, his tongue, one small nibble led to another until she returned his kiss with matching passion.
“Oh, Ross,” she breathed raggedly when his lips left hers to trail fire along the sensitive cord of her neck.
“That’s it, princess.”
“No.” That word. That past.
His breath warmed her ear. “You’ll always be my princess, Chloe.” He nibbled at her lobe. “It has nothing to do with the past. Right now you’re my princess.” With a groan, he pressed her to him. She felt his desire as she tried to deny her own, but that same coil of need gnawed within her. She was on the verge of losing control.
“No!” Her scream echoed back through her with such force that only Ross’s arms kept her standing. As she sagged against him, he eased down onto the sand, turning her to sit with her back to his chest, her knees bent and bounded by his. He said nothing, just held her, his arms wrapped around her middle.
Chloe couldn’t have moved if she’d tried. Drained by emotional strain, she closed her eyes and breathed in deeply of the slow-cooling air.