He grabbed my hand, outstretched in protest, and pulled me out of the stall, secured the door, whistled a call he evidently thought would bring Dice… and it did. He rolled a greasy bag from his pocket, and brushing hay dust from a patch of cobblestone, emptied meat scraps. “Your salary, sir.”
I was marched to the trailer, passing Pete on his way into G-Barn, and Rafe stood, glaring at me, until I found my bathing suit. We were off in the waiting Austin-Healey with a hearty “hiyo, Silver.”
But he was right. There weren’t any bodies in the pool, which was magnificent. He pointed officiously to a bank of louvered doors at one end of the pool. “Change!”
Unfortunately there was a full-length mirror in the bathhouse, and the reflection of me in its crystal-clear surface was disheartening. My old suit was really old. In fact, it was two-piece because I’d had to cut it in half when the middle of me elongated. I’d seamed the rough edges around elastic. It had been a good suit eight years ago when Mrs. du Maurier had handed me a whole stack of clothes her younger daughter had briefly worn and discarded. The suit was mended and darned, and it covered as much as most suits these days, but candidly speaking, all it covered was bones. I didn’t have much bust-a flat horsewoman’s figure, boyish, with too much muscle in the arms and shoulders, hard thighs, and not too much calf. I had small ankles, yes, and my toes were well shaped from the roominess of riding boots and the exercise of sandals, but who rhapsodizes over toes?
I checked my hairline. The dye had been guaranteed insoluble in water, and the hair didn’t seem to have grown much since the last coloring. Whom did I think I was fooling if Caps were here, and my saddle had been cut? The idea of teen-age hoods having funsies didn’t quite answer my circumstances. “Hey!” Rafe Clery was back.
I peered around the door, and then, disgusted with myself, flung it wide. I guess I stood there a longer time than was polite, but if I’d been a sculptor, I’d’ve wanted him to model for me. He was a man with a perfectly beautiful, superbly conformed body, in miniature, the most elegant example of “after” of a Body Beautiful ad, Steve Reeves with no coarse knots of muscle. Blow Rafe Clery up to six feet, and, well… I could sort of see why he’d attracted two wives. Why he’d detracted them could only print out “insufficient data.”
Then he grinned as if he were aware of his effect on womankind and I hadn’t disappointed him. At least, with my reaction to him. He padded across the green concrete skirting of the pool, and taking both my hands, held them out from my sides.
“You’re neat, you know. Neat. Not gaudy.” His expression was almost… proprietary? His hands slid up my arms to my shoulders.
I was close enough now to see the light dusting of black hair on his tanned arms and across the muscular plane of his chest, making a thin line down the ridge of the diaphragm muscles, disappearing into the excuse for a bikini he was wearing, which barely covered nature’s compensation for his lack of stature.
There was a satisfied expression in his eyes when I jerked mine back from where propriety decreed a well-bred miss ought not to look. He looked suddenly so knowing, so smug, that he was no longer an objet d’art, but man, male, masculine…
“Neat, not gaudy, compact and…” His expression became avid. I’d seen that peculiar look once before. It revolted me. “… and sexy!”
I tried to wrench free, but his hands tightened, and our bare bodies touched. I struggled, remembering another bare hard body. Then I was free, staggering backward. He caught my elbow, steadying me, his eyes concerned, startled at my reaction.
“Hey, hey, gently,” he murmured, his voice deepening to the tone he’d used with Orfeo. “Easy, girl.”
“I’m not a mare.” I thought, “Two-legged ride.”
“Indeed you aren’t. Last one in is a rotten egg.” And he had swiveled around, launching his body flat out over the water in a long shallow dive. “Hey, it’s great!” he called to me, surfacing, shaking wet hair out of his face.
I saw the scar then. With a hat on, with wavy black hair worn long, the hairless scar that went from the back of his neck up the side of his head to one temple wasn’t noticeable.
I dived in, landing badly, and the contact with the water surface made my side smart as I came up.
“Tsk, tsk.” He trod water, shaking his head.
I splashed him and ducked before he could retaliate.
He hadn’t done anything, and certainly he had released me quickly enough when he saw his attentions bothered me. And I liked him. I liked him. I liked looking at him. We began to swim about, the easy companionship of the morning’s ride infecting us again.
“Hey, miss. Miss!” A stern summons floated to us. A mahogany lifeguard in trunks the same bright blue used as a decorative motif by the motel was gesturing to me. “You have to have a cap. Hair clogs the filter.”
“I don’t have one,” Obediently I swam to the edge of the pool. Rafe’s short fingers closed around my forearm and pulled me back into the water. “Find the lady a cap, please, George.” “Sure, Mr. Clery.”
Holding onto the gutter, I turned. “ ‘Sure, Mr. Clery.’ Do you always get that response from people?”
The pleasure was wiped from his face as if he’d been douched in cold water. He regarded me with no expression at all. The water dripped from his hair, and some strands leaped up at odd angles but did not cover the heavy white keloid of that scar. The lines in his face were unrelieved by any touch of humor, and he looked weary as well as much, much older.
“Who turned you off, Nialla Dunn?” I tried to pull myself away from him, but his arms caged me against the side of the pool. His chest pressed water against me, his legs dangled against mine, and the weightlessness of water brought our hips together. “Here you are, Mr. Clery. It’ll fit any size head, miss.” A disembodied hand thrust a white cap between us. Rafe took it, his eyes never leaving mine. Treading water, he stretched it and fitted it deftly over my head, tucking my hair up under the edges.
“Silly, actually. Your hair’s sopping.” “It’ll keep long hair out of the filter,” George said above us, and then I could hear, above my roaring desolation, the slap of his feet moving away from us. Rafe’s body drifted against mine again. “Who turned you off sex, Nialla Dunn?” I wanted very much to cry. My head felt tight, my eyes smarted, and I desired more than anything else to put my head down on his shoulder. Which was a ridiculous notion.
“I’ll rephrase that,” he said in the deep gentle voice that was unnerving me. “Did someone turn you off sex, Nialla Dunn?”
I managed a short nod.
“Rape?”
It was almost a relief to admit it.
He began to curse softly, our bodies drifting apart from intimate contact. Only then did I realize how impersonal that contact had been. For him, at any rate. I shivered. The water was a good temperature when you were swimming, but cold, cold, when you stayed in one place.
With a rush of water, he had erupted from the pool.
“Hands up!” And his voice was light again.
I looked up, and he had extended his arms to me, crossed at the wrists. Puzzled, I obediently lifted mine, and the next thing, he had neatly extracted me from the water, twisted me around-so that I was sitting on the edge. I was getting to my feet when a huge towel enveloped me and strong fingers massaged the back of my neck.
“George, would you ask Renzo to bring out two of those hearty executive breakfasts he’s been touting?”.
“Sure, Mr. Clery.”
Only I heard an odd echo of that cheerful affirmative in my ear and realized, when I saw Rafe Clery’s mischievous grin, that he’d chimed in. He gestured toward one of the double lounges at the pool terrace, scooped up a second towel, and began drying himself briskly, scattering his hair every which way, oblivious to the scar that showed so horribly. He smoothed his hair back, without even checking to be sure the scar was covered. He’d know it was, Rafe Clery would.