Conquer the Memories

Chapter 11

Mr. Bartholomew grinned at them from the dock. “Have a wonderful time, you two! Any problems, you just give me a little ship-to-shore,” he called over the rising roar of the engine.

He motioned to Sonia and, laughing, she leaned over the side, expecting the precarious buss on the cheek that she got. “Don’t you worry about that husband of yours, honey,” the marina owner told her. “He knows more about boats than probably half the people on the Gulf. You just get yourself a solid honeymoon going there.” He winked lasciviously before ambling his portly body to the dock edge, where he untied the first line and tossed it to her.

She was still coiling the last line as Craig slowly maneuvered the cruiser out of the crowded marina and into open waters. Waving one final time at the distant form of Mr. Bartholomew, Sonia turned toward the sun, and then exuberantly bolted up the five steps to Craig at the wheel.

He didn’t much look like a yacht owner, dressed in cutoffs and sneakers. Sonia perched on the matching captain’s chair next to him, tossing him a happy grin as she slipped her sunglasses down from the top of her head and onto her nose again. From behind that cover she was free to feast on his sun-browned skin and half-naked torso…in between checking out a sky that looked burned-on blue, a grape-winged gull soaring overhead and the endless waters of the Gulf foaming behind them.

“What’d that dirty old man say to you?” Craig demanded.

She chuckled. “That you had more experience on the water than half the people who rent boats around here.”

“That man talks more drivel than a stand-up comedian.” The shore waters by the marina were peppered with sailboats and weekend cruisers. Craig risked only a single glance at his wife.

She could feel the assessment in his eyes as he took in her nautical white short-shorts and T-shirt with anchors. The anchors were strategically placed, to rise and fall with every breath. “You know…” She tried to make her voice mild, which wasn’t that easy over the roar of the engines. “I thought I had everything so perfectly arranged that you wouldn’t have to do a thing. The plane tickets, transportation to the marina, food ordered ahead, insurance, the boat rental…”

“You did.” Craig spared her another quick glance.

“But somehow it never occurred to me that there was a little more involved. Licensing, navigation laws, setting courses, docking facilities.” It hadn’t occurred to her because all she’d had in mind was leaving a dock, throwing out an anchor in the middle of the Gulf somewhere, and having her husband alone at her mercy for four days. She did not, for the moment, mention that. “Engine rooms, fuel tanks, electrical backups,” she droned on. “Amazing how fast you picked it all up.”

Craig shot her an unholy grin. “I listened to Bartholomew for three hours last night.”

“Bull,” Sonia said sweetly. “Who was she?”

“Pardon?”

“I said, Mr. Hamilton-of-landlocked-Wyoming, who was she?”

“Who was who?”

“You didn’t come by all that boat expertise honestly, buster. Now, I always like to think of them as poor substitutes. Not rich yacht owners.”

“Who?” Craig’s brow flexed in a quizzical frown.

“Your former girlfriends.” Sonia slid off the leather seat, peering at him severely over the rims of her sunglasses, and announced, “I’m going below to get a soda. For me. You’re in hot water. So you’re a big fan of rowboats, are you? Isn’t that what you told me at dinner the other night?”

His arm snaked around her ribs before she could take the first step down. Even as his hand again touched the wheel and stayed firmly there, he managed to haul her tight to his chest and take a quick teasing nip out of her neck before he released her again. “I’ve told you a thousand times, I was a virgin when I met you,” he reminded her.

“Send that one to Ripley’s,” Sonia said flatly. “Not once-not once-have you ever told me one good sordid story about your past lovers.”

“Because I didn’t have any.”

Sonia sighed. “The very least you could do is tell me she was ugly,” she insisted.

“Who?”

“The girl who taught you more than you needed to know about boats.”

“She was ugly,” Craig obliged.

“Pockmarked.”

“Pockmarked,” he agreed gravely.

“Buck teeth.”

“No orthodontist could have helped her.”

“Dull.”

“Dull,” he said, choking with laughter.

“And it was definitely a platonic relationship.”

“You bet.”

“All right,” Sonia said grudgingly. “You’ve earned your soda. Only because I know you would never lie to me.” She headed for the steps.

“Sonia,” he called after her. “They were all poor substitutes.”

Chuckling, she climbed down to the salon, and paused for a moment in sheer appreciation. The powder-blue couch and chairs had navy piping and pillows, a color scheme accented by hand-rubbed teak bulkheads. The furniture fabric was velvet, dreadfully impractical and delightfully luxurious. Her sneakers bounced on the spongy carpet, definitely a carpet that called for bare feet. The cruiser was everything she’d been promised on the phone, and more.

The forward cabin was set up like a study, with couches and bookshelves. Toward the back of the boat-aft, she reminded herself for the ninth time-was their master stateroom. Centered therein was a queen-sized bed. The pillows were down-filled, the sheets were satin and the comforter was a cloud-soft pale blue. Diverted from her search for cold drinks, Sonia leaned thoughtfully in the doorway, staring at that bed.

She had rather dangerous plans for that bed. Dangerous because there was no guarantee they would work. There didn’t seem to be any convenient rule books on how to turn one very unselfish lover into a selfish one. The only thing Sonia was absolutely sure of was that there would be no more one-sided satisfaction. One very stubborn, enigmatic, extremely well-loved man was about to get his due, or there would be no more encounters of any kind, on that bed or any other.

Her game plan was very simple. All she had in mind was giving her husband an intensive course in total sexual frustration.

And if that doesn’t work? Darn it, if he really doesn’t want to make love with you… Taking another glance at the bed and plump, stuffed pillows, she sighed worriedly, lifted her chin and headed back through the salon.

A teak railing and three steps up separated the kitchen from the main salon. Sonia removed two cans of cola from the refrigerator and then randomly opened cupboards and drawers. The diminutive galley delighted her, from the microwave to the grill to the itsy-bitsy dishwasher. More important, it was stocked with every goodie Craig had ever expressed a liking for, from steak and baby crab to cooling bottles of Orvieto and Cabernet Sauvignon.

Everything was there. Snatching up the Cokes, she raced pell-mell up to Craig again.

He’d missed her, he thought fleetingly, in those short ten minutes. Exactly how long had it been since he’d been totally alone with his wife for a few stolen days? And a most puzzling mood had been stealing up on him from the moment they’d arrived near the Gulf Coast of Texas. A contrary, inexplicable mood.

It had something to do with endless sun and ocean smells and lazy, lazy winds. Relaxation had slowly been creeping up on him like a drug; he’d almost forgotten what it was like to feel…easy. Not just with Sonia, but with himself.

His right to touch his wife, his sense of failure about himself as a man…these feelings hadn’t disappeared, but for the moment seemed involuntarily shifted into another part of his being. Increasingly, all Sonia had to do was slip out of sight and he was impatient for her to come back. He craved, desired, wanted, needed her, and he was becoming rather obsessed by the wanton urge to take Sonia, to love her, to make love to her, to feel her sheathed softness around him.

His soul was beginning to feel as if it had been spun in a blender.

It didn’t help when Sonia bolted up the steps with the cans of cola in her hands, laughing as if just the breeze alone delighted her, the sun dancing in her hair and her limbs blithely displayed in front of him as she leaned against the opposite chair.

“I’ll open your soda for you,” she told him cheerfully, and popped the top, chuckling as the cola foamed. Her tongue swooped down and lapped at the burgeoning foam before she handed it to him. “That’ll teach me to run up the stairs carrying carbonated pop, don’t you think?” she asked dryly.

He didn’t know. He was too busy following the path of her tongue, the faint moisture on her lips, as he accepted the can. He took a long gulp, though his thirst was not for any carbonated drink. “Thanks,” he murmured, just a slight edge of irony in his tone.

“I’m broiling.” Taking the hem of her top in her fingers, she lifted it up, tugged it over her head and pulled it off. Seconds later she had skimmed her white terry-cloth shorts down to her ankles and bent over to step out of them. “Better,” she announced.

Better? he thought roughly. Better? Her bikini was scarlet. A set of three bows and some string. The expanse of Sonia’s white skin was exactly the measure of what skin had never been touched directly by the sun before, no matter how often she swam in her mother’s pool.

“New suit?” he said flatly.

“Hmm.” Sonia took a sip of her drink and despaired. The suit should have brought some reaction. Heaven knew, if a sea gull had winged close, she would have blushed.

She took a second sip of pop, again set the can down and regarded her husband from behind her dark lenses with a determined expression. “Are you going to show me how to pilot this thing, Captain?” she asked lightly.

Before he’d had the chance to say a word, she slipped down from her stool, ducked under his arm and angled in front of him. A panoply of shining dials confronted her. Behind her were Craig’s cutoffs and muscular brown legs. She leaned lazily backward until her hips were cradled in his spread thighs. “Where,” she questioned, “is the throttle?”

Craig didn’t answer for a moment. When he did, his voice was thick and low. “Sonia-” His throat appeared to unclog. “There are two. Here. You have to move them both at the same time.”

“No problem,” she informed him. Her fingers experimented with the little levers. Within seconds, the steady slice of the prow turned into a chop, chop, chop, as the boat burrowed through the waters, spitting out an incredible wake of bubbling white froth behind them. “How long before we get to the little cove Mr. Bartholomew told us about?”

Craig’s voice was totally controlled, and rather dry. “About a minute and a half, assuming we maintain this death-defying speed. About two hours, otherwise.”

Sonia’s head tilted back, her hair curling on his bare shoulders as he glanced down at her upturned grin. “Was that a subtle suggestion that I slow down?” she asked.

“That rather depends on whether or not you value life.” He did. Hers. The look and feel of her windswept hair and her impudent red lips parted in laughter…Strands of hair were lacing across her forehead, her cheeks. He lifted his hand, intending to smooth them back.

Sonia saw his arm rise, just as she saw that instant’s hesitation before his hand touched her. She’d been waiting for him to make that move. “You win,” she announced cheerfully, and swiftly, smoothly, slid under his other arm and away. “Obviously, my driving skills are totally unappreciated here. You will find me,” she informed him, “on the upper deck. Having a love affair with the sun.”

Her sea legs were still a little precarious, but she held on to the rail as she wandered up to the top deck of the boat. Water splashed up, sprinkling her with an ice-cold spray in direct contrast to the steadily baking sun, making her laugh. Above, the white deck was hot, but not unbearably so.

Slipping off her sneakers, she stretched out on her back, wishing she’d brought a towel and deciding that for the immediate present she could do without one. The day stretched in front of her with endless possibilities, and if her mind had been churning out anxieties and plans at miles per minute, her body paused simply to take in all the luxuries of sun and water, all the new smells and new sounds.

After a time, she turned over on her stomach, lifted her head and smiled at Craig. A sun visor separated them, along with perhaps three feet of distance, and Craig was standing at the helm; she could only see his face when she raised her head up so high. She gave him a lazy wave and lowered her head again. After a moment, she glanced on both sides of the boat, saw absolutely no other sail or vessel at all, and reached back to untie her bikini top.

In seconds, the wispy garment sailed over the visor. She lifted her head up just for an instant, to make sure that Craig had caught it.

He had. The skinny band of material was clenched in his fist. There was a nice little pulse hammering at the base of his throat.

Smiling, she cradled her head on her arms and closed her eyes.

They had anchored in a half-moon cove that looked for all the world like the tiny harbor of their own private deserted island. Sunset colors shimmered through the still palms, and the sandy beach in the distance had the glow of gold. Gulls soared overhead as if they had nothing better to do than glide free in those last moments of day.

The water slip-slopped against the boat’s hull in an endless, rhythmic sway that was half lullaby, half sensual call to the senses. A hush had fallen with evening. The wind had died, and the heat had become something alive and lazy and hypnotically soothing. Craig leaned over the rails, watching the silver fin of a fish just beneath the water. Behind him, the grill continued to glow with dying coals. Dinner was over, and he absently drank the last of his wine.

“Craig!”

He turned quickly and strode to the steps in time to catch the falling bundle in Sonia’s arms. “What on earth are you-”

“Guess what! I found a telescope below,” she explained, laughing as she set down the rest of her armload.

Craig noted her other choices with amusement. One blanket, two pillows, one bowl of grapes, two clean glasses, one additional bottle of wine when they weren’t even close to finishing the first one yet, and yes, a sort of portable telescope. “We needed the grapes to look at the stars?” he questioned wryly.

She stuffed one into his mouth. “Not specifically, but generally, yes,” she chided him. “Every normal human being suffers constant hunger pangs when spending a day on the water. Look how much we ate for dinner.”

“We?” Craig teased.

“Waste not, want not.” Sonia glowered darkly.

“Is that why you raced through nearly two steaks all on your own?”

She nodded impishly. “And you’re going to pay for this trip when we get home with a week of cottage cheese, if you can’t control my appetite better than that, Mr. Hamilton.” She turned away, to bend over and spread out the blanket on the deck.

“In that case, perhaps I’d better take control over all of your appetites, Mrs. Hamilton.”

Her fingers stilled on the blanket, and then she gave it a vigorous shake. Amazing, how quickly sensuous images could dance through her bloodstream.

She hadn’t kissed her husband in twenty-four hours now. Fourteen hundred and forty minutes. Withdrawal pangs had set in about fourteen hundred minutes ago. To the devil with sex. Affection, just touching, had always been part of their relationship. And her heart was regularly beating out a reminder that plans or no plans, a man in trouble needed all the affection and compassion she could give him.

Still, love and attention she had given freely. It hadn’t erased the haunted look in her husband’s eyes. Other action, drastic action, had been called for.

Fine. Well, actually that wasn’t fine at all, because keeping him at a good distance meant not only that he couldn’t touch her, but that she couldn’t touch him either.

Craig swiftly moved beside her, fixing the blanket she couldn’t seem to smooth out to save her life. He cast her a quick smile, one of his most lethal playful ones. He’d changed into canvas shorts for dinner; she’d dressed just as informally in a black maillot bathing suit with sexy holes up and down the sides. For the instant, though, she couldn’t seem to get into the role of tease. All she wanted to do was grab those sun-browned shoulders and hold that huge man so tight, so hard, so…

“Cat got your tongue?” he teased. “All this silence is so rare I can barely stand it.”

“You,” she said disgustedly, but the feeling wouldn’t leave her so easily. He needed some good, solid loving, that man. He’d been easy and tender and special all day, which made yet another ball of anxiety tighten inside her. What exactly was it going to take to get him to loosen up and admit what was bothering him? It hurt, that he believed he was fooling her. “Now,” she said, all businesslike as she plumped the pillows, “we have one night, one sky full of stars and one telescope. For once in my life, I’d like to locate more than the Big Dipper.”

He slid down beside her with a chuckle. “I wasn’t aware of this terrible gap in your education.”

“I don’t admit it to everyone.” Lying on the deck, she reached over him for the wine, and poured him a glass. “We have to do something until it gets dark enough. I figured I’d play Roman slave girl to your Nero. You lie there, and I’ll feed you grapes and wine.”

Blue eyes rested on hers. A lightning storm crackled from nowhere. The sky was cloudless and there wasn’t the hint of a breeze, but somewhere between his eyes and hers there was searing tension, a crackling awareness…“You do like that idea, don’t you?” Her voice was oddly low, working to keep the teasing tone in it. “The lady at your mercy, to do with what you will?”

“I like the idea.” His palm brushed in her hair, smoothing it back. “Not of Nero, not of slave girls. But of you feeding me grapes and wine, on a boat with no one around, on a night when no one can hear us. Do you know what I’d like to do to you?”

His eyes gave her a very good idea. She searched his face. Darkness had fallen so rapidly that his eyes had a luminous quality, all the intensity of luster, all the softness of the dark waters surrounding them. He wanted to touch her; he wanted to love her; she could feel it clear to her soul. Her spine tingled with it.

But would it be the same, would he make love to her but not with her, would he give only for her pleasure?

His eyes made lush, erotic promises to her…yet his body spoke of control. Control where he was concerned.

Leaning her cheek to his palm, she pressed her lips there softly and then withdrew. She picked up a grape and raised the sweet fruit to his lips. “Enjoy, Nero,” she commanded brightly. “Your time will come. First, the stars.”

She could feel him staring at her as she busied herself with the telescope, handing him his wine again, chattering. Naturally, he was staring; she’d never behaved like such a fool in her life! Still, he let her play out her games without a word, and in time she relaxed.

Twenty minutes later, stretched flat, she had the telescope to her eye and was squinting into it as she swung it back and forth across the sky. “This is hopeless,” she complained. “I can’t even find the North Star.”

Craig tugged the telescope from her hands and pointed it at the brightest diamond above. One could hardly miss it.

She gave him a severe look for the chuckle he was barely holding back. “I know it’s up there. But it disappears when you put the lens to your eye.”

He sighed. “How can one extremely intelligent woman be such an occasional dunce?” he questioned the heavens.

“Oh, hush.” She put the telescope back in its box, stood up and stretched. “I knew all along I should have married Mack McPherson. Never, never, would he have made fun of me.”

His eyes trailed the length of her long, sleek legs in the moonlight. “Who is Mack McPherson?”

“Didn’t I ever mention him? You dragged everything else out of me. Without once,” she added plaintively, “revealing one interesting detail about your own past love life.”

“Mack,” he reminded her.

“Mack was the high school heartthrob,” she said with a grin. “The Mr. Cool of Cold Creek High. Basketball star, big man in school politics, the local tycoon’s son-and also my first date.” Sonia’s lashes lowered as she took a thoughtful look at her husband. He wasn’t scowling, because Craig was far too mature to give in to anything as childish as jealousy. He just looked…irritated. Definitely irritated.

While she had his attention, she slowly stood up, and receded just slightly into the shadows. When Craig glanced up at her, she peeled down first one strap of her maillot, then the other. “My first date, and he took me up to the Stone Canyon-the local lovers’ lane. He took all his dates there, which is exactly why I went out with him. He had a fifty-eight Chevy with a terrible muffler and a big backseat. I could hardly wait. Everybody else had been kissed to death, and I hadn’t the least idea what they were talking about. It was…humiliating. Mack was my big chance to get in on the action.”

She encouraged the black maillot down her long, slender legs until it fell like a little puddle on her toes. Stepping out of the shadows, she gave the suit an impish kick in Craig’s direction. The moonlight shimmered down on her bare skin like a cloak of silk. “Want to swim?” For a big man, he could certainly move fast. His canvas shorts joined hers on the deck. “What I want,” he growled, “is to hear what the hell happened. Keeping in mind that with that attitude, I’m surprised your parents didn’t keep you permanently locked up.”

He was aroused, she noted. They hadn’t even touched, and he was…definitely, vibrantly, aroused. And coming toward her.

She took a swift step to the ladder, stepped up and around the rail, and posed for a racing dive. “Heck, he kissed like a fish,” Sonia called over her shoulder. “I decided all that sex stuff was vastly overrated. Of course, when I was seventeen…” She sent one quick, teasing grin over her shoulder before diving in.

The water was cool and dark and buoyant-all delightful qualities to cool her husband off, Sonia considered. Except that his hands were cleaving through the water as if he were in the Olympics. Which would be fine, if gold medals were all he wanted to get his hands on.

And it wasn’t time. His wanting to touch her wasn’t enough.

She held her breath and went down, deep down, and switched directions. Evidently, she hadn’t gone as deep as she planned, because their toes touched once, and she heard a garbled sound ringing through the night air when she surfaced. She was hardly about to let that slow her down. She lapped around the boat once, then twice, then a third time. Craig was by far the better swimmer but lacked the basic, purely feminine deviousness to keep changing directions on a whim.

Gasping, Sonia took the last lap around the boat and reached for the ladder. Water streamed from her body as she pulled herself up, and a quick chill trembled on her bare skin in spite of the warm night air. By the time Craig heaved himself up behind her, she was swathed in floor-length white terry cloth, all chaste and prim.

“No sharks got me,” she said demurely.

“The night is young.”

Unfortunately, yes, she thought sadly. The night was young and an ideal one for lovers, and Sonia managed to keep the two of them busy gathering up the telescope and pillows and whatever. Down in the cabin there were a few other little washing-up chores from dinner. Sonia showered first, and while Craig was washing the salt water off himself, she was burrowing under the covers and forcing her eyes closed and trying to make her breathing seem even.

Craig clicked open the shower door and stepped out, wrapping a towel around his waist. His pulse was racing at an odd rate. It had been racing that way all day. Sonia was the cause, and when he stepped out into their stateroom, there was a glint of something dark and unfathomable in his eyes. Torture would have been easier to handle than the teasing that Sonia had handed out all day.

At first he’d been amused by her antics. Sonia had never been predictable. He loved that in her, but sometime earlier that day his humor had died. In part, he thought she’d just been playing, enjoying the high that came with their impromptu vacation. In part, he’d been so wrapped up in his own problems that he hadn’t really thought out her motivations. And in part, perhaps, after living on the ragged edge of frustration for so many weeks, he just hadn’t noticed that Sonia’s behavior was distinctly out of character.

Dropping the towel, he spotted her curled-up form on the bed. His pulse abruptly stopped racing. Sonia was totally still, except for the odd pattern of her breathing.

She wasn’t asleep, only pretending to be.

Very quietly, he turned out the light. Instead of joining her in bed, he slipped out into the salon, closing the door behind him. Collapsing in a chair with his head thrown back, he closed his eyes.

She didn’t want him to make love to her? She’d been sending him sexual S.O.S. signals all day.

It was past time he figured out what game she was playing. He felt as if he’d been kicked, hard and painfully, in the ribs. For weeks, he’d survived his own deprivation. That wasn’t the same thing at all as being deprived of his right to love her, please her, touch her. A man could survive a hell of a lot longer without food than without water. And no, he wasn’t in a desert.

His heart was just beginning to feel as if he were lost in one.