Fantasy Unlimited Page 12

  Samantha tied the halter top of her bikini on. 'As in completely and utterly naked?' she asked, and tried to imagine herself sunbathing in the nude. It was bad enough to think of wearing nothing in a crowd, but it was worse when she contemplated sharing a beach blanket with a man who wasn't a husband or a lover. How, she wondered, does one hold up one's end of the conversation when the other participant is lounging around in what is euphemistically referred to as his 'birthday suit'? Where in heaven's name does one look? Up, she supposed with a touch of amusement, up, not down. Never down.

  'Completely,' Josh said. 'That's what they tell me.'

  'Who's they?'

  'Well, actually, the steward.'

  'He doesn't tell me things like that.'

  'You mean he didn't tell you about the massage parlour or the topless night club or the place that sells dirty movies?'

  Samantha slipped out of her briefs and pulled on her bikini bottom. 'I had no idea Rhodes was such a den of iniquity,' she said coldly, and then added, 'You can turn around now—I'm done.'

  But as he turned, she quickly knelt down on the blanket and began to fold her dress. She didn't want to see Josh's expression or have him comment in any way on what she looked like in a bikini. The truth was that, beneath the idle banter and casual flirtation, there were different messages being passed, and Samantha wasn't quite sure what she was agreeing to or what would happen. They hadn't discussed their mutual attraction, the conversation had only skirted around the issue of sex. But here they were together, in the briefest of clothes, on what amounted to a desert island, with nothing to stop them from consummating that attraction. Samantha wouldn't have admitted it to a soul, but she was nervous, more nervous than she'd ever been in her life.

  If Josh sensed her state of nerves, he gave no indication of it for the next hour. All through their picnic lunch, he treated her as if she were a sexless companion, a pal on an outing, a friendly acquaintance. As they sipped white wine and nibbled at crackers topped with lobster pate, they discussed nothing more important than the weather, a book they had read, a movie both of them had seen. The sun was strong enough by early afternoon to have them both in the sea where Josh set out on a long swim and Samantha stood waist-high, splashing water on her neck and shoulders, as she watched him cut through the waves, his arms moving rhythmically, his kick even and powerful.

  'You're good,' she said when he swam back and stood up near her, his hair sleeked back, droplets of water coursing over his shoulders and chest. 'You must do a lot of swimming.'

  'I'm in a club,' he told her.

  'A swimming club?' she asked as they walked back to the blanket and lay down on it.

  Josh rolled on to his back and closed his eyes against the sun. 'Yup—a competitive club.'

  'Do you go in for races?'

  'Occasionally.'

  Samantha lay down on her stomach, resting her head on her arms, her face turned in his direction. What she could see of him was a brown, curved shoulder, the curl of his ear, tangled dark hair and the crescent of one eyelash that lay across his cheek. She contemplated him for a moment and then curiosity overcame her. 'What else do you do?' she asked.

  'What do you mean—what else?'

  'You swim and work and—what else?'

  'I suppose you're talking about women.'

  She was flustered. 'Well, I ...'

  'When a women wants to know what a man does,' he said calmly, his eyes still closed, 'she's really asking about his sex life.'

  'You think you know everything, don't you?'

  'A lot,' he said. 'Not everything.'

  'Well, for your information,' Samantha lied, 'I couldn't care less.'

  'Your sure about that?'

  'Yes.'

  'Then you'd rather not know about Helen?'

  'Helen?' she queried.

  Of the red hair and manic sex drive.'

  It was impossible for Samantha to maintain her nonchalance. Her head came up off her arms. 'What do you mean?'

  He grinned up towards the sun. 'I thought you couldn't care less.'

  'Well, that's an incredible thing to say about someone!'

  'Is it?' he asked lazily. 'She was always trying to lure me into bed.'

  Samantha carefully put her head back, only this time she stared in the opposite direction, facing the stretch of beach. 'And were you lured?' she asked in an equally lazy voice.

  'Do I detect a smidgin of interest, Miss 93rd Street?'

  She could tell from his voice that he had turned on to his side and was now looking at her, but nothing on earth could have made her face him. 'Other people's sex lives are always interesting in a clinical sort of way,' she said.

  'True,' he replied. 'For example, you once told me that men are insensitive. I wondered where you did your research.'

  'You didn't answer my question,' Samantha returned. 'I'm not going to answer yours.'

  'All right,' said Josh. 'A question for a question, an answer for an answer. Fair enough?'

  She tried to analyse it. The law had taught her that questions could be asked in different ways to elicit different answers. They could be probing, angled, direct or oblique. A skilful questioner could always learn more than the person questioned wished to reveal. And then, of course there were answers that could be phrased to camouflage reality, to avoid telling the truth, to turn the questioner in the wrong direction. If Josh were clever, she'd learn nothing. If she were clever, he'd learn nothing. On the other hand, suppose she gave something away and he didn't? Wouldn't that put her at an uncomfortable disadvantage? She tried to frame a statement about the need to be honest during the coming exchange, but the sun was too hot and the heat made her head swim a bit.

  It just seemed easier to answer him, so she turned to face him and discovered that her head had gone from swimming to drowning. He was too close to her and, with his body angled sideways, she was given the long view; of a muscular throat, a deep chest, black hair angling across a flat abdomen, unexplored and enticing terrain beneath the narrow triangle of blue silk. She had to make a deliberate effort to raise her eyes to the level of his, to confront the lazy grin that told her without words that he knew precisely what she was doing, to actually remember what she'd been about to say.

  She cleared her throat. 'All right, a question for a question, an answer for an answer.'

  'I wasn't lured into her bed,' he said.

  The sun, the heat and the overdose of masculinity almost had Samantha bemused enough not to catch the hole in that answer, but her laywer's training saved her. The hole was so big you could have driven a truck right through it. After all, what she really wanted to know was if Josh had made love to Helen, and the act could have taken place anywhere—his bed, her bed. 'You mean, you didn't sleep with her?' she asked.

  'It's my turn,' he said. 'You'll have to wait. Tell me, have you ever had an affair?'

  She discovered that she didn't want to be honest. Oh, she wanted to know everything about Josh there was to learn, but she didn't want him privy to her own secrets. But his question was direct and unavoidable and, reluctantly, she said, 'Yes.'

  'Your turn.'

  'Did you sleep ...' Samantha caught the imprecision and corrected herself, 'have sex with Helen?'

  'No. Did you love him?'

  Samantha felt such a rush of relief at the knowledge that Helen's insinuations had been lies that she'd lost track of the conversation. 'Who?' she asked.

  'The man you had an affair with.'

  'No, I ... I didn't love him.' There was an odd flicker in Josh's eyes. 'Have you ever been married?'

  'No. Then why did you have an affair with him?'

  It was going too fast for her. She could barely digest the answer before she was confronted with another question. 'I thought I loved him.'

  'Did he love you?'

  The sun, the intensity of his eyes, the heat was making her so dizzy that she forgot that it was her turn to ask, her turn to probe and dig. 'No,' she said, 'he didn't.' And she put
her head face down into the circle of her arms. It felt good to close her eyes and not have the brilliance of the sun making her eyelids feel as thin as paper. It felt even better to end a conversation that had brought back unpleasant and unhappy memories. And, above all, it felt wonderful to obliterate the vision of Josh for a few minutes and allow her head to clear.

  As she lay there, Samantha realised that she had made a very bad and very dangerous decision when she had agreed to spend the day with Josh. She'd known that she was attracted to him, but in her naïveté she had believed she could keep the attraction under control. And she was so accustomed to her lawyer-like clarity of mind that it had never occurred to her that the closeness of any man could make her so dizzy that she would forget what she was saying or what she was doing. She wanted to blame it on the sun and the heat, but the symptoms hadn't begun until she'd turned her head and found him only inches away, his bare flesh so close to hers that it had taken every bit of will power she had to keep from drawing nearer.

  The best thing she could do, she decided in the dark circle of her arms, was to bring this outing to an end.

  If it went on much longer, if he got any closer to her, she was no longer sure that she'd be in control. And if there was one thing that terrified her above anything else, it was being out of control. Therefore the thing to do was to get up and demand that Josh take her back to the Princess Marguerita. If he refused, she would say she had a vicious headache, a sore throat, a fever, whatever it would take to convince him that she couldn't spend one more moment on the beach without collapsing.

  This last thought was so pleasing to her that she decided to bypass the first step and move right into a devastating illness. Faintness, she decided, that would do it. She'd sit up and announce that she was feeling faint. And the truth was that she was feeling the slightest bit faint anyway, wasn't she? Besides, it was quite possible that the moment she opened her eyes again, the dizziness would return. She imagined that moment. She'd find Josh in front of her, his eyes dark and intent, his flesh so close she could feel his heat on her own, his... God, she was feeling dizzy and faint already! She wouldn't even be faking it, Samantha was so pleased with herself that she smiled into the darkness and almost didn't feel his palm sliding across her skin and the slight tug on the strap of her halter. It was seconds before it came home to her that he had actually undone the bow at the back, thereby making her top absolutely useless. She started to protest, but now his hands were moving lower to the brief wisp of fabric that stretched across her hips. It was held in place to the front piece of fabric by two bows. Actually, Samantha thought dizzily, they were knots. She hadn't wanted to make bows every time she put the bikini on, so she'd made knots. Good, strong knots. Knots that would have made her Girl Scout leader proud. Knots that could have held a ship to a dock in a high wind. Knots that should have made her feel secure and safe and protected—instead of naked and vulnerable, faint and helpless, afraid and yet so wanting that she did not move, did not even breathe as his hands moved ever lower.

  CHAPTER TEN

  'You're burning up,' Josh said.

  'I am?' Samantha's voice was a strangled whisper.

  His fingers inched down the edge of her bikini. 'You're turning red.'

  'Oh.'

  Then she felt a cool application of suntan lotion on her back and the soothing strokes of his hands as he spread it along the upper muscles of her arms and then, in broad caresses, on the curve of each shoulder. His hands drew together as they reached the indentation of her spine, and he worked the lotion with his fingers down each side of her backbone.

  When he began on her legs, Samantha tried to ignore what was happening to her. She lay absolutely still, acting as if his fingers were not on her calves or the back of her knees, behaving as if she didn't care when his hands moved to her thighs, their circling motion bringing him ever closer to that soft juncture of skin between her legs. When his fingers brushed the fabric of her bikini, she steeled herself against moving, but when it happened again, she could not stop the sound that escaped her lips.

  'Turn over,' he said huskily, and Samantha couldn't stop herself. Obediently, she turned over, one forearm flung over her eyes to blot out the sun, the other braced across her chest to conceal what her untied halter could no longer cover.

  He began with her toes and the arches of her feet, caressing the delicate bones of her ankles, holding each foot between his hands and bestowing on them his undivided attention. The gentle caressing of his fingers was a precursor of what was to come, and Samantha held herself breathless against the moment when his hands would move up her legs. And then, when it happened, the sensation was so erotic that her legs actually parted slightly to make his voyage easier. But she shivered when he touched the insides of her thighs and, sensing her tension, he moved upward, his thumbs running along the edge of her hipbones and then sweeping across the soft swell of her abdomen.

  A warm dizziness came over her when he gently removed her arm from its protective stance across her chest and tossed the now useless halter aside. She felt her nipples harden as his hands spread across her rib cage and then moved upwards to cup her breasts which seemed to swell in anticipation of her caress.

  'Josh,' she said. 'Oh, Josh.' And then he took her in his arms, his bare skin touching hers, his lips meeting hers, their bodies touching at toe, knee, hip, chest. Nothing remained of Samantha except the passion that had now taken over her.

  Josh lifted his mouth from hers, 'God,' he swore, 'not again!'

  Without the protection of his head to keep the sun off her face, Samantha was forced to turn her head to one side. It was then that she caught what he had heard; the revving of a car motor just before it clicked off, the blaring music of a radio, high-pitched laughter, doors slamming, a child crying—all the sounds of the arrival of a group of people who have come to enjoy the beach on a hot afternoon.

  'Oh, lord!' she breathed, sitting up quickly, grabbing for her halter and holding it up against her, her fingers shaking as she tried to do up the ties.

  'Easy,' Josh said softly. 'I'll fix it.' His fingers were far steadier than hers and, when he touched her, he could feel that she was trembling. 'Will you be all right?' he added.

  She nodded, although she had no idea when that would be true. She was still shaking; her very skin felt as if it were quivering. Desire, she found, does not disappear at will. It can come unannounced, creeping up on you, a saboteur out to destroy your calm, well-ordered life. It wasn't until the family of noisy beachgoers had appeared with their paraphernalia, and she and Josh had cleaned up the remains of their stay, that Samantha actually began to erect around herself some of the walls and defences that made up her usual air of composure.

  She walked to the car, her legs steady.

  She helped Josh pack the picnic basket, umbrella and blanket in the boot.

  She discussed the sudden increase of traffic on the road back to Rhodes.

  She sat beside him and acted as if nothing untoward had happened on that lovely, isolated beach.

  In fact, she was just beginning to breathe a little easier and to feel as if she were once again back in control of her life, when the realisation hit her, like a blow, an attack, an explosion. It destroyed the very shaky barricade of calm she had erected. It blew apart the theories about herself that she had always taken as gospel. It made her sit up, rigid, in the car seat and stare fixedly and unseeingly at the suburbs of Rhodes. What had finally hit her was so obvious, it was a wonder that she had not realised it before, but then she had spent so much time lying to herself, trying to cover up what was happening, and attempting to shield herself from vulnerability, that she'd managed to avoid the truth.

  She had fallen in love.

  The dizziness came over her again, forcing her to grab on to the handle of the car door, but it didn't blur the clarity of the evidence. Everything pointed to the verdict—the emotional swings she'd had ever since meeting Josh, the way she lost control every time she ended up in his
arms, her overwhelming desire to sleep with him. No man had ever made her feel that way. In fact, in her heart of hearts, Samantha had even wondered if she'd been born so careful and cautious that she was incapable of falling in love. But Josh had proved to her otherwise and, while there was a part of her that gloried in the knowledge that she could be like everyone else, that she had finally fallen truly in love, and that the object of her desire was sitting only inches away from her, the other part was well aware that there was absolutely no cause for celebration.

  'Well,' said Josh when he had managed to manoeuvre the car into a comfortable spot between a truck and a taxi, 'we're going to have to do something about this.'

  She didn't dare look at him—not with her new knowledge. 'I don't think you can,' she said. 'It must be rush hour.'

  He gave her an amused look. 'I'm not talking about the traffic.'

  'Oh,' she said, and glanced down at her intertwined hands.

  'I'm talking about us.'

  'Let's not talk about it.'

  'Why not?'

  'Because ... because I'm sorry it ever happened.'

  He was infuriatingly calm. 'No, you're not.'

  'I am!'

  'You enjoyed it as much as I did.'

  Samantha couldn't deny that, but she could certainly refuse the next opportunity for enjoyment. 'I don't want to ever ...' she began hotly.

  'Look, Sam, I'm not going to push you into anything you don't want. That's not my style, so you don't have to worry about it. And I'd like to think that, if and when we do make love together, you're there of your own free will.' The traffic was too heavy for him to give her anything more than a quick look. 'I'm not going to pressure you. It's up to you to come to me. All right?'

  His words were so thoughtful, so gentle and so caring that for a brief second Samantha allowed herself to be deceived into believing that what Josh proposed was not a shipboard fling, but a longer, more enduring relationship. After all, she thought as another wave of dizziness passed over her, they didn't live far from one another in New. York; in fact, they were practically neighbours. There was no reason why the emotions engendered between them under the hot Greek sun couldn't be continued and nurtured in the hustle and bustle of their normal, daily lives. She saw herself going out with Josh to the theatre, spending Sunday mornings with him reading The New York Times, holding hands as they strolled down Riverside Park. She saw them sharing an apartment together, meeting one another's families, making decisions about marriage and children and careers. The vision was so glorious that it even went one absurd step further, and she saw herself holding a baby in her arms, a baby with dark hair and Josh's dark eyes and ...