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Bared to him, and so deliciously vulnerable, Mallory whispered words of gentle, desperate encouragement as he tormented the bit of quivering flesh with soft kisses. She writhed, gasped with delight, when he took his pleasure yet again, bringing his tongue into play this time, sampling her and then suckling as though to draw some sweet nectar from her. “Don’t—stop—” she pleaded, her wanting now as naked as her hips and her thighs and her stomach.
He drew back, just slightly. “Sweet,” he whispered in a ragged voice, and then he enjoyed her in long, warm, delicious strokes of his tongue. Savage pleasure convulsed Mallory, and her triumph came in a cry that was half shout, half sob.
It was then that, in the snowy silence outside, an engine roared. One car door slammed, and then another.
Nathan swore harshly and straightened, while Mallory, cheeks burning, frantically righted her clothes. Feet were stomping heavily on the porch outside, and Cinnamon began to bark in somewhat belated alarm.
“Just a minute!” Nathan growled, closing his eyes in an obvious effort to control his roiling emotions and frustrated need.
As embarrassed as though the visitors had seen the impromptu love scene staged in the McKendrick kitchen, Mallory turned to the stove to hide her flaming face and occupy her hands with the task of brewing fresh coffee. After another moment of preparation, Nathan answered the door.
“Oops!” Trish Demming blushed, sizing up the situation with her usual gentle shrewdness. “Alex, I think we interrupted something.”
Trish’s good-natured, bespectacled husband pretended to rush for the door. He was Nathan’s accountant and one of his closest friends.
“Sit down,” Nathan ordered humorlessly, and Mallory felt his hot gaze touch her rigid back. Out of the corner of one eye, she saw Trish set a covered baking dish down on the counter.
It was several minutes before Mallory gathered enough composure to join the others at the kitchen table, and, even when she did, it was clear that Nathan wasn’t going to give her an easy time of it. His dark eyes seared her breasts whenever the opportunity afforded itself, and lingered on her lips until she thought she’d shout with frustration.
Still, it was pleasant to spend time with dear friends, and Mallory genuinely enjoyed the lively conversation touching on everything from Nathan’s last concert tour to the ban on gathering oysters along the island’s rocky shores. Trish had brought one of her highly acclaimed peach cobblers, and they all ate a hefty slice with their coffee, Trish and Mallory bemoaning the astronomical calorie count.
Mallory was fairly trembling with hidden exhaustion and anticipation when Trish began to make sincere noises about leaving. Good-byes were said, and the Demmings bundled up in their practical island coats and braved the snow piling up between the house and their car.
Mallory and Nathan exchanged a look of resignation when they heard the car’s motor grind halfheartedly, and then die. Nathan’s eyes moved over Mallory’s body in a sweep of hungry promise, and then he swatted her gently on the bottom and bent his head to nibble briefly at her earlobe. “I’ll be back soon,” he said, and strode out onto the sun porch, rummaging through the collection of battered coats that had belonged to her father.
Mallory needed to sink languidly into a warm, scented bath and go to bed. She was so tired that sleep would come easily, but not before she and Nathan had reached the breathless heights of love they always scaled after they’d been apart.
And we’re apart so much, she thought, her weariness reaching new and aching depths.
A moment later, there was a stomping sound on the porch, and Trish reappeared, looking embarrassed and apologetic. “Nathan and Alex are trying to get the car started,” she mumbled, unconsciously rubbing her chilled hands together. “Ace mechanics they’re not.”
Mallory grinned at her friend and firmly ushered her closer to the stove. “It’s all right, Trish,” she cajoled. “There’s still plenty of coffee, if you’d like more.”
Trish shook her head, and her soft blond hair moved delicately with the motion. “We shouldn’t have barged in here like that,” she said ruefully, and then her blue eyes moved to Mallory’s face. “I’m so sorry, Mall—it’s just that I was worried about you, and, of course, we had no idea that Nathan was home.”
Mallory hugged Trish warmly. “You were being thoughtful, as always. So stop apologizing.”
Trish’s pretty aquamarine eyes were pensive now, seeing too much. “Mall, you really look beat. Are you okay?”
Suddenly, Mallory had to look away; she couldn’t sustain eye contact with this friend she’d known all her life and say what she meant to say. “I’m fine,” she insisted after a short pause.
The tone of Trish’s voice betrayed the fact that she was neither convinced nor mollified, but she spared Mallory her questions and gave her a gentle shove in the direction of the bathroom. “Go and take a nice hot bath and get yourself into bed, Mrs. McKendrick. I can look after myself until the men get our car going again.”
Mrs. McKendrick. Mallory blanched, unwittingly giving away something she hadn’t meant to reveal. She longed to be known by her married name again, and yet, it sounded strange to her, as though she had no right to resume it.
Trish laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Get some rest, Mall. We’ll have a good, long talk when you’re up to it.”
There was much that Mallory needed to confide, but this was neither the time nor the place. “I—If you’re sure you won’t feel slighted—”
Trish’s eyes were sparkling with warmth and controlled concern. “Just go, will you? I’m not such an air head that I can’t entertain myself for a few minutes!”
Mallory laughed, but the sound was raw and mirthless. Reluctantly, she left her friend to her own devices and stumbled into the bathroom, where she started running hot water in the tub.
While it ran, Mallory hurried through the doorway that joined that room to the master bedroom and began to search wearily through the suitcases Pat had packed for her earlier at the penthouse. There were jeans and sweaters, always necessary for winter visits to the island, but nothing even remotely glamorous had been included. Mallory thought of all the silken lingerie left behind in Seattle and sighed. She had so wanted to look especially attractive for Nathan, but Pat had either not foreseen that contingency or not considered it important.
With resolve, Mallory ferreted out her least virginal flannel nightgown and carried it into the steam-clouded bathroom. Over the roar of the water, she heard Trish and Alex’s car start up.
Smiling to herself, Mallory stripped and climbed into the tub. The warmth of the scented water was heaven to her tired muscles, and she sank into it up to her chin, giving a soft sigh of contentment as total relaxation came at last.
Home, she thought happily. I am home.
The heavy enameled door of the bathroom squeaked open then, and, suddenly, Nathan was there, his dark eyes taking in the slender, heat-pinkened length of her body. Beneath the suntan he’d undoubtedly acquired in Australia, where it was now the height of summer, he paled.
“My God, Mallory,” he swore. “How much weight have you lost?”
Mallory shrugged as she averted her eyes. “Maybe five pounds,” she said.
Nathan was leaning against the chipped pedestal sink now, his arms folded, watching her. “More like fifteen,” he argued, his voice sharpened to a lethal edge. “You were too thin when I left, but now—”
Mallory squeezed her eyes closed, hoping to press back the sudden and unaccountable tears that burned there. Was he saying that he didn’t want her anymore, didn’t find her physically attractive?
She felt his presence in the steamy bathroom, heard him kneel on the linoleum floor. When Mallory opened her eyes, she was not surprised to find him beside her, the knuckles of his powerful, gifted hands white with the force of his grasp on the curved edge of the bathtub.
“Mallory, talk to me,” he pleaded hoarsely. “Tell me what to do—how to change things—how to make you really happy again.”
One traitorous tear escaped, trickling down Mallory’s slender cheek and falling into the bathwater. “I am happy, Nathan,” she lied.
Nathan made a harsh, disgusted sound low in his throat. His eyes burned like ebony fire. “No,” he countered. “Something is chewing you up alive, and the hell of it is, I can’t do a damned thing about it if you won’t trust me enough to be honest.”
Mallory’s voice was small and shaky with dread. “Do you want a divorce, Nathan?”
He was on his feet in an instant, turning his back on Mallory, shutting her out. His broad shoulders were taut under the soft gray fabric of his shirt.
Unable to bear the oppressive silence placidly, Mallory reached out and grasped the big sponge resting in an inside corner of the tub. Fiercely, she lathered it with soap and began to scrub herself so hard that her flesh tingled.
“I would understand,” she said, when she dared speak.
Nathan whirled suddenly, startling her so badly that she dropped the sponge and stared at him, openmouthed. His face was rigid with suppressed fury and something very much like pain. He folded his arms in a gesture that, with him, signaled stubborn determination.
“Understand this,” he said in a low and dangerous tone. “You are my wife and you will remain my wife. I don’t intend to let you go, ever. And you will warm no one else’s bed, my love—not Brad Ranner’s, not anyone’s.”
Mallory felt the words strike her like stones, and it was all she could do not to flinch with the pain. “What?” she whispered finally, in shock.
Nathan’s face was desolate now, but it was hard, too. “You’ve been wasting away ever since you signed on with that damned soap opera, Mallory. And there has to be a reason.”
Mallory lifted her chin. There were reasons, all right, but Brad Ranner wasn’t among them, nor was any other man.
“I’ve been faithful to you,” she said stiffly. And it was true—she had never even been tempted to become intimate with another man, and she had come to Nathan’s bed as a virgin. She couldn’t bring herself to ask if he’d been as loyal; she was too afraid of the answer.
Nathan sighed, the sound broken, heavy. “I know, Mallory—I’m sorry.”
Sorry for what? Mallory wondered silently, sick with the anguish of loving a man who belonged to so many. Sorry for accusing me like you did or sorry that you have a number of nubile groupies to occupy your many nights away from home?
“I’m very tired,” she said instead.
“I see. You weren’t tired in the kitchen tonight, were you?”
The sarcasm in his voice made Mallory’s cheeks burn bright pink. “That was a long time ago,” she snapped, not daring to meet his eyes.
“At least an hour,” Nathan retorted.
“Leave me alone!”
“Gladly,” he snapped. Then, slowly, Nathan turned and left the room. When the door closed behind him, Mallory dissolved in silent tears of exhaustion and grief.
Nathan stood at the bedroom window, looking out. There wasn’t much to see in the darkness, but the storm had stopped anyway. That was something. Behind him, Mallory slept. The soft meter of her breathing drew him, and he turned back to look at her.
The dim glow of the hallway light made her fine cheekbones look gaunt and turned the smudges of fatigue beneath her eyes to deep shadows. She looked so vulnerable lying there, all her grief openly revealed in the involuntary honesty of sleep.
Nathan drew a ragged breath. How could he have urged her to surrender her body the way he had, when she was so obviously ill? And what had possessed him to imply that she was attracted to Brad Ranner, knowing, as he did, that that kind of deceit was foreign to her nature?
Quietly, he approached the bed and pulled the covers up around her thin shoulders. She stirred in her uneasy sleep and moaned softly, intensifying the merciless ache that had wrenched at Nathan’s midsection since the moment his press agent, Diane Vincent, had thrust Pat’s cable into his hands after the last concert in Sydney.
The night was bitterly cold. Nathan slid back into bed beside his wife and held himself at a careful distance. Even now, the wanting of her, the needing of her, was almost more than he could bear. Raising himself onto one elbow, Nathan watched Mallory for a long time, trying to analyze the things that had gone wrong between them.
He loved her fiercely and had since the moment he’d seen her, some six and a half years ago. Prior to that stunning day, he’d prided himself on his freedom, on the fact that he’d needed no other person. Now, in the darkness of the bedroom, beneath the warmth of the electric blanket, he sighed. If he lost Mallory—and he was grimly convinced that he was losing her, day by hectic day—nothing else in his life would matter. Nothing.
She stirred beside him. Nathan wanted her with every fiber of his being and knew that he would always want her. But there was one thing greater than his consuming desire, and that was his love. He fell back on his pillows, his hands cupped behind his head, his eyes fixed on the shadowed ceiling.
Her hand came to his chest, warm and searching, her fingers entangling themselves in the thick matting of hair covering muscle and bone. “Nathan?” she whispered in a sleepy voice.
Despite the pain inside him, he laughed. “Who else?” he whispered back. “Sleep, babe.”
But Mallory snuggled against him, soft and vulnerable. “I don’t want to sleep,” she retorted petulantly. “Make love to me.”
“No.”
Her hand coursed downward over his chest, over his hard abdomen, urging him, teasing. “Yes,” she argued.
Nathan was impatient. “Will you stop it?” he said tightly. “I’m trying to be noble here, damn it.”
“Mmm,” Mallory purred, and her tantalizing exploration continued. “Noble.”
“Mallory.”
She raised herself onto one elbow and then bent her head to sample one masculine nipple with a teasing tongue.
Nathan groaned, but he remembered her thinness, her collapse on the set in Seattle, the hollow ache visible in her green eyes. And he turned away, as if in anger, and ignored her until she withdrew.
2
The telephone was ringing when Mallory awakened the next morning. She burrowed down under the covers with a groan, determined to ignore it. If she waited long enough, Nathan would answer it or the caller would give up.
But the ringing continued mercilessly, and Mallory realized that her husband wasn’t nestled between the smooth flannel sheets with her. Tossing back the bedclothes with a cry of mingled irritation and disappointment, she scrambled out of bed and reached automatically for her robe.
The house was pleasantly warm, and Mallory smiled, leaving the robe—and an aching recollection of Nathan’s rejection the night before—behind as she made her way into the kitchen and disengaged the old-fashioned earpiece from its hook on the side of the telephone. “Hello?” she spoke into the mouthpiece, idly scanning the neat kitchen for signs of Nathan. Except for the heat radiating from the big woodburning stove, there was nothing to indicate that he’d been around at all.
“Hello,” snapped Diane Vincent, Nathan’s press agent. “Is Nate there?”
Mallory frowned. Good question, she thought ruefully. And where the hell do you get off calling him “Nate”?
“Mallory?” Diane prodded.
“He was here,” Mallory answered, and hated herself for sounding so lame and uncertain.
Disdain crackled in Diane’s voice. “One night stopover, huh? Listen, if he happens to get in touch, tell him to call me. I’m staying at my sister’s place in Settle. He knows the number.”
Mallory was seething, and her knees felt weak. She reached out awkwardly for one of the kitchen chairs, drew it near and sat down. She despised Diane Vincent and, in some ways, even feared her. But she wasn’t about to let anything show. “I’ll relay your message,” she said evenly.
Diane sighed in irritation, and Mallory knew that she was wondering why a dynamic, vital man like Nathan McKendrick had to have such a sappy wife. “You do that, sugarplum—it’s important.”
Mallory forced a smile to her face. “Oh, I’m sure it is—dearest.”
Diane hung up.
Outside, in the pristine stillness of an island morning, Cinnamon’s joyful bark pierced the air. Mallory hung up the phone and went to stand at the window over the kitchen sink, a genuine smile displacing the frozen one she’d assumed for Diane Vincent. Nathan and the enormous red dog were frolicking in the snow, their breath forming silvery white plumes in the crisp chill of the day. Beyond them, the towering pine trees edging the unpaved driveway swayed softly in the wind, green and snow-burdened against the splotchy sky.
Mallory swallowed as bittersweet memories flooded her mind. For a moment, she slid back through the blurry channels of time to a cheerful memory….
“One of these days,” her father was saying, snowflakes melting on the shoulders of his checkered wool coat and water pooling on the freshly waxed floor around his feet, “I’m going to have to fell those pine trees, Janet, whether you and Mallory like it or not. If I don’t, one of them is sure to come down in a windstorm and crash right through the roof of this house.”
Mallory and her mother had only exchanged smiles, knowing that Paul O’Connor would never destroy those magnificent trees. They had already been giants when the island was settled, over a hundred years before, and that made them honored elders.
With reluctance, Mallory wrenched herself back to the eternal present and retreated into the bedroom. There would be time enough to tell Nathan that Diane wanted him to call, she thought, with uncharacteristic malice. Time enough.
Mallory crawled into bed, yawned and immediately sank into a sweet, sound, dreamless sleep.
When she awakened much later, the sun was high in the sky, and she could hear the sizzle of bacon frying and the low, caressing timbre of Nathan’s magical voice. Grinning, buoyed by the sounds and scents of morning, Mallory slid out of bed and crept to the kitchen doorway.
Nathan, clad in battered blue jeans and a bulky blue pullover sweater, stood with his back to her, the telephone’s earpiece propped precariously between his shoulder and his ear. While he listened to the person on the other end of the line, he was trying to turn the fragrant bacon and keep an eager Cinnamon at bay at the same time. Finally, using a meat fork, he lifted one crispy strip from the pan, allowed the hot fat to drip off and then let the morsel fall to the floor. “Careful, girl—that’s hot,” he muttered. And then he moved closer to the mouthpiece and snapped, “Very funny, Diane. I was talking to the dog.”
Mallory stiffened. Suddenly, the peace, beauty and comfort of the day were gone. It was as though the island had been invaded by a hostile army.
She went back to the bedroom, now chilled despite the glowing warmth that filled the old house, and took brown corduroy slacks and a wooly white sweater from her suitcases. After dressing and generally making herself presentable, she again ventured into enemy territory.
Nathan was setting the table with Blue Willow dishes and everyday silver and humming one of his own tunes as he worked. Mallory looked at the dishes and remembered the grace of her mother’s hands as she’d performed the same task, the lilting softness of the songs she’d sung.
Missing both her parents keenly in that moment, she shut her eyes tight against the memory of their tragic deaths. She had so nearly died with them that terrible day, and she shuddered as her mind replayed the sound of splintering wood, the dreadful chill and smothering silence of the water closing over her face, the crippling fear.
