“Shelley, Shelley,” he breathed against her stomach as he pushed up her skirt and peeled the panty hose down her legs. He cursed them and his own clumsiness. Lest he terrify her with his desire, he forced himself to slow down, but her anxious hands on his shoulders were frantically imploring. He fastened his mouth on hers when his caressing fingers confirmed what he’d suspected. She was ready for him, pliant and moist.
He hurriedly freed himself from his restrictive clothing and poised on the threshold of her womanhood. He cradled her face between his hands and searched her eyes. “Do you think I’d let a stupid girl like that come between us? After ten heartbreaking years for both of us, do you think I’d let anything or anyone rob us of this happiness again?”
She shook her head, tears of love dampening her cheeks and the backs of his hands. “I told you that if I ever had you for one night, I’d never be able to let you go,” he continued. “But I’ll leave if you ask me to. I’ll leave. Now. But you have to ask me to.”
Her fingers intertwined behind his head and she pulled him down. She spoke against his lips. “No, Grant. Don’t leave.”
“Dinner. I didn’t mean what I said about—”
“Neither did I. It was a stupid thing for me to say.”
“I got rough. If I hurt you—”
“No, no,” she moaned. “But love me now.”
His body sank into hers, hard and full, filling the void his absence from her life had created and which only he could heal. Their tumult came quickly and simultaneously. As his life-force pumped into her, he said, “Nothing will separate us again.”
And she believed him.
She awakened in a tangle of limbs. Grant’s even breathing stirring the hair on the top of her head assured her that he was sleeping soundly. She eased away from him, covered his nakedness against the morning chill and crept to her closet to take out a fleecy robe.
Wrapping herself in it, she moved softly toward the kitchen with the intention of percolating coffee to carry in to him when he woke up. Musing on the tantalizing prospects of what would happen once they’d been fortified with caffeine, she was not immediately aware of the knocking on her front door. Puzzled as to who could be calling so early in the morning, she went to open it.
She peered through the tiny window at the side of the door and her heart lurched into her throat. “Daryl,” she whispered in dismay.
CHAPTER 8
He knocked again, more imperiously this time. For no other reason than to stop his insistent knocking, she unlocked the door and swung it open.
For long moments they stared across the threshold at each other. Shelley marveled over her supreme indifference at seeing him. Once, shortly after the divorce, the sight of him would have made her heart do somersaults. She would have been nervous, self-conscious. At one time he had possessed the power to make her feel insignificant. No longer.
As a sign of her newfound confidence, she made him speak first. “Shelley,” he said, nodding his head with cold condescension. He was still handsome in a boyish, dimpled kind of way. “Did I get you up?”
“Yes,” she lied. It gave her a sense of superiority to know that she was naked beneath the robe and that he couldn’t arouse her body, never had been able to. She longed to shout that at him, to flaunt his failure, to debase and humiliate him as he had her the night he had emotionlessly informed her that he wanted her out of his life.
“May I come in?”
She shrugged and moved aside. He pushed past her brusquely and for the first time she noticed the anger that had kept his dimples from really showing. He was furious over something. He rarely let himself get so upset that it showed.
He turned toward her after only a sweeping glance around her living room. “Sit down,” he said, flexing his fingers against his thighs, another sign of his agitation.
“No,” she responded and crossed her arms over her chest. She couldn’t imagine what had brought him from Oklahoma City so early on a Sunday morning, but she wasn’t about to obey his commands as she once had. The only emotion he had aroused in her was curiosity. But she wouldn’t even give him the satisfaction of asking what he wanted. She looked at him coolly.
His jaw tensed. He was grinding his teeth, a habit he’d tried for years to break. Once again his fingers were flexing as he held his arms stiffly at his sides. “I want to know what the hell you think you’re doing?”
She blinked several times and laughed shortly. “I was about to make coffee.”
He took a menacing step forward. “Don’t play cute with me, dammit. You know what I’m talking about. That Chapman guy. Are you seeing him?”
She wondered distractedly how he could get the words past lips that didn’t seem to move. “Yes,” she answered simply. “I’m taking his poli-sci class twice a week.”
“It’s more than that,” he roared, suddenly giving vent to his barely contained rage. “A friend of mine saw you at the football game and then later at the chancellor’s house together. You’ve been going to his apartment in the evenings. What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, repeating himself.
“That’s none of your business,” she said, flinging her head back in an attitude of defiance that he’d never seen before and that momentarily stunned him. The storm brewing in her blue eyes was new to him, too.
When he had regained his senses, he hissed, “The hell it’s not. You’re my—”
“Ex-wife, Dr. Robins. And at your choosing, if you’ll remember. I don’t know why you’re here and care less, but I’m telling you now to leave.”