"What are you going to do?"
Inadvertently Stevie had voiced the question he was wrestling with himself. She had the sense to look worried. She knew the importance of his decision and the impact it would have on her. She realized how valuable her story would be to the journalist who had an exclusive.
Judd ran his hand down his face. He felt terrible for a variety of reasons. His lower body was persistent in its reminders that it was as yet unappeased.
A queasiness had seized his stomach, which he attributed to drinking his coffee too fast, although he knew better. It was the thought of another golden opportunity slipping through his fingers that made him ill.
He answered the only way he could, the only way that felt right. "I'm going back to work."
He saw her swallow hard, but watched with admiration as she lifted her chin a notch. "In Dallas?"
She had guts, alright. He wondered how he'd missed seeing that during all these years that he'd been poking fun at her in his column.
'No. In the dining room." 'You won't… won't tell anybody where I am?"
"It'll remain our little secret for as long as you want it that way."
Her relief was visible. She relaxed her rigid posture. Still, she didn't gush gratitude. She didn't genuflect. "Good," she said simply.
"That will make my life easier, and I'm glad you're not forsaking your novel."
"Last night you said it sounded self-indulgent, boring and… what was the other word, disgusting?"
She had the grace to look chagrined. "You provoked me to speak unkindly."
"Speaking of provocative," Judd said, slowly leaving his chair and rounding the table, "this morning was-"
"Judd." She popped out of her chair as though her bottom had discovered a splinter in the smooth wood. "I wanted to explain about that."
He actually felt his face muscles forming his frown. "What's to explain?"
"Why it happened."
"I know why it happened. It's called lust, which according to Webster's is a noun meaning a desire to gratify the senses, bodily appetite, sexual desire, especially as seeking unrestrained gratification."
If the venomous look she shot him was any indication, she didn't think that was cute. "I was disoriented. Those pills are strong. I wasn't thinking clearly.'
She was backing away from him, staying just beyond his reach. That angered him as much as her excuse for her passion, which he knew damned good and well had been as all-encompassing as his.
"Oh, I see," he said. "You couldn't desire me unless you were under the influence of a controlled substance. Is that what you're saying?"
"Not exactly."
"Then what? Exactly." ' 'I don't want to make love with you," she declared curtly.
He barked a short laugh. "Like hell you don't."
That steamed her; he could tell. By now he knew the signs: a suffusion of color in her cheeks, a darkening of her eyes, which were the warm, soft color of expensive scotch but a hell of a lot more intoxicating, a determined lift of her chin.
"My life is in crisis," she said in a tight voice.
' 'So is yours. Neither of us needs a romance right now with anybody, but especially not with each other. Maybe we should have taken our cue from Stockholm and--"
"I did. You were hot and ready for me then, too."
Stevie closed her hands into fists and took a deep breath. "We've only got a few days left before I promised to give my manager an answer.
During that time, I think we should keep our friendship strictly platonic."
He drew close and sneered, "Tell that to your glands, baby."
She gasped with outrage, then whirled out of the room and up the stairs. He tore after her and got as far as the staircase before he stopped.
The Judd Mackie who hung out with the guys in bars after ball games and boxing matches was urging him not to be a nerd, to go after her. One kiss, one well-placed caress, and she'd be putty in his hands again, begging for it.
He deserved it, didn't he? Hell, he had given up two weeks' pay on her account, not to mention an outstanding story that would have earned him untold income. If his car got repossessed it would be her fault.
He had been hospitable, providing her safe refuge and fresh country air, meanwhile banishing himself from his own life and all the pleasures it afforded him, namely booze and broads.
She had cost him time, trouble and money.
Was it asking too much for one roll in the hay?
But the Judd Mackie who knew that one roll in the hay with this particular woman would never be enough and who had promised that her secret was safe, forced him to turn and head for the dining room and the waiting typewriter.
Being honorable was new to him. He was bound to suffer a few growing pains, but figured that if he had any character at all, he could endure a few disappointments.
Slightly more than a "disappointment," his wicked side mocked. It cruelly reminded him how much he wanted her sexually by flashing him a mental image of her breasts, flushed and dewy from his mouth's caress.
Look, he argued with his darker self, I've never had to coerce any woman into bed with me and damned if I'm going to start with Stevie Corbett. Besides, I'm going to be so immersed in my book, I won't have time to think without sex.
To which his tormentor cackled, Tell that to your glands, baby.
It rained steadily for two days, forty-eight interminable hours during which they had to tolerate the weather that kept them indoors, each other's fractious mood, the specter of their thwarted lovemaking-which each wanted to diminish in importance but neither could-and the desire that was as tenacious as the inclement weather.
During mealtimes they hardly spoke because when they did the conversations invariably resulted in arguments. To while away one long afternoon, Stevie drove into town and bought the foods necessary to prepare a special dinner, one that would showcase all her epicurean skills.
That turned out to be the evening Judd chose to write through dinner without taking a break.
He asked her to bring him a tray in the dining room. After she had spent hours in the kitchen preparing the sumptuous meal, his simple request was tantamount to a declaration of war.
She told him from the arched doorway that he could fix his own damn dinner tray and then go straight to hell.
They had another argument over the bathroom.
"Please don't leave damp towels on the floor," she said snippily.
"I wouldn't have to if you didn't hang every garment you own on the towel racks and curtain rod." He swatted at the damp lingerie dangling over the tub.
"Where am I supposed to hang them up to dry in weather like this?"
"Ever heard of a clothes dryer?"
"I can't dry my underwear in a clothes dryer."
Her incredulous comeback seemed to make no sense to him whatsoever. With a snarl and a curse, he stamped from the bathroom.
"It wouldn't hurt you to shave, you know," she called after him.
"What difference does it make to you?"
So it went until, finally, around noon of the third day, the rain stopped. An hour later the sun came out. Steam rose off the puddles in the yard, making the atmosphere as humid as a South Seas island.
Stevie ventured outside first to inspect her battered flower beds. The new plants lay in the mud, but she was confident that a few hours of sunshine would revive them.
"Are they on the critical list?"
Judd ambled out onto the porch. He was wearing his standard wardrobe-shorts. The only variation from day to day was the color of them. He no longer seemed to have any self-consciousness about his scarred leg. Most of the time he went without a shirt and shoes. Clasping his hands together, he turned them inside out and raised them high over his head in an expansive stretch.