Authors: Amanda Carpenter
looked ridiculous, with his mouth hanging open, and Roxanne had
finally come out of the sulks, laughing until she had to hold her sides.
Astonished and rather furious, Jeffrey pulled together quite nicely,
but he had been thrown off stride from the beginning, and she never
let him regain control, making him run for every one of his returns.
She couldn't blame him for being amazed at her ferocious playing.
She was rather pleasantly surprised herself. But the running,
pivoting, sheer hot work of it felt good to her. It was as if she were
exorcising her own private devil, instead of plastering Jeffrey all over
the court, which she granted was probably the case.
At the end, she laughingly told her chagrined opponent, 'You ate too
much for breakfast! The same thing happened to me last week after
lunch. Don't feel bad, you probably could have creamed me.'
Jeffrey mopped his sweaty brow and glanced, askance, at the now
empty court behind them while the others hooted at him in good-
natured derision. 'Somehow,' he replied, with a quick heaved breath,
'I don't think so.'
Caprice was hot and breathless herself, but still feisty, so she rounded
on Emory with a predatory leer, remarking conversationally, 'As I
recall, at breakfast you laughed at me.' He began to protest volubly as
she took Jeffrey's racquet and tossed it to him, handle upright.
'Come on, Emory!' Petra coaxed.
'Put your money where your mouth is!' Roxanne taunted.
Amidst his excuses, Caprice smiled dangerously. 'That's all right,' she
said gently. 'You don't have to play if you're afraid to.'
That did it. Emory marched to the court with his jaw squared, while
Jeffrey threw himself on to the grass to watch with glee. This time
first serve ♦ was determined by a flip of a coin, and Caprice lost. As
she took her standard receiving position at one end, half crouched for
a sprint in an unpredictable direction, out of the corner of, her eye she
saw a dark, elegant, strolling masculine figure coming their way.
His first serve, she sent into the net. His second, she returned
decently enough, but lost the volley, and soon the game. All the
while, she was terribly, totally, tensely aware of that aloof, watching
shadow under the pines.
Sunshine beating down on her head, lungs working hard, feeling the
muscles in her thighs tremble, she held the ball for a moment,
bending over at the waist while she took a breather. Silence, from the
sides and the other end of the court.
Go away.
The ball thrown, her
body arched into sleek motion, coming down to the asphalt with both
feet planted, feeling the jar of it all through her body. Emory lost the
volley.
Quit looking at me, damn you.
They switched sides. Her side hurt
her, and she pressed her hand deep into the flesh under her ribs. And
she was mad. This time, however, it was mostly directed at her own
stupid reaction to someone she barely knew, but it had the same
vitalising effect as it had on her first match, and she proceeded to
send Emory into agony with a diabolic finesse. He was too fleshy,
too heavy to be really quick at short, intense spurts, and he, too, had
eaten a hearty breakfast, so it was really to no one's surprise that she
carried that match, too.
Afterwards, Emory was ribbed as much as Jeffrey had been, while
Caprice stood in silence and held her hands up to her forehead,
panting. 'You OK?' Roxanne asked quietly, and she nodded without
expending energy to speak back.
She could suddenly feel Pierce's approach with every part of her
blood-pounding, hot body. Jeffrey turned to her, then, and said, 'Hey,
you know who you really need to play is Pierce, here. He'd be a good
challenge for you.'
She pressed her hand to her side, feeling soreness where she'd had the
stitch. 'No.'
Pierce had been saying something to Gwynne, his head bent to her,
black hair and dark eyes, and white, white smile. Jeffrey, with a
typical obtuseness, ignored or didn't hear her short reply, and turned
to his older brother. 'Wouldn't you like to play Caprice? I'll bet she
just might be able ta beat even you. What do you say, want to make a
date of it tomorrow morning?'
'I won't play with him,' she said, quiet and still. Was it her
imagination, or was there more significance to that statement than
she'd meant to give it? Pierce looked at her. Their eyes met. An
awkward silence fell over the group. . That still expression, that
mature, mobile body, those liquid sparkling eyes, that proudly held,
proudly moulded head. She felt the blood leave her face, going quite
pale under her tan, which left her eyes peculiarly large. He had
expected no different, she could see. She made herself grin weakly,
as she offered a tension smoother. 'After all, I came here to vacation,
not to train.'
A few smiled back, while Jeffrey, ever ignorant of deeper
undercurrents, laughed. Pierce didn't say a thing, nor did he react in
any discernible way. Just those eyes, in dispassionate, clinical
observation of her heat-streaked, taut face. .
She whirled away, feeling, for no clear reason, hunted, and she threw
over her shoulder, 'I'm going to shower! Tickets for sale at the box
office!'
She left them laughing, every time.
After supper, Caprice lounged on a window seat, effectively taking
up enough of the space so that no one offered to join her. The group
was in the family room, and behind her, Jeffrey and Roxanne were
playing a disjointed, ill-ruled billiard game while Petra and Emory
made themselves scarce outside, and Lane, Ralph, and Gwynne
played records and drank wine as they sprawled on couch and
armchairs.
The afternoon had been idled away. Caprice, who had pleaded
exhaustion after the tennis from that morning, had lounged in a
garden recliner while the males, with Roxanne and Petra, played
touch football. Gwynne kept her company and they had talked while
watching the others frolic laughingly on the green, smooth lawn. For
touch football, they ended in tackles a surprisingly large amount of
the time, though the young men took care not to hurt either of the
girls.
Pierce had disappeared, and had not been present at the evening
meal, which had been more formal than Friday's. She told herself she
was glad and very nearly believed it. Certainly she did not feel
herself to be under any tension, but the evening had a flat quality to it
that she could not quite explain to herself.
Ah, well. Tomorrow evening, and it was home again, home again,
jigitty jog. The childhood phrase made her smile.
She roused herself and whipped the rest into a game of charades,
which somehow became imbued with a hilarity that made the rest of
the downstairs echo from their laughter. Towards the end of the
evening, she wandered out of the family room and into another,
shadowed room, and she searched the wall for a light switch, curious
to find what the room contained. It was a library, amazingly well
stocked, she found, and she wandered through it, lightly browsing.
As she reached a section almost wholly consisting of philosophy,
both modern and classic? Jeffrey spoke from behind. 'Those are
Pierce's. What's more, he's read them all, if you can believe it.'
She turned, with a smile. 'Didn't you read philosophy in college?'
'I'm still waiting for the movie,' he said drily. He took a step forward,
and became serious, too serious. 'Caprice -'
At the same moment, she whirled away, and broke through to say
animatedly, 'This is such a lovely place! I must remember to thank
your parents for so graciously hosting this weekend party. They're
nice, I like them.'
'Caprice- -' he began again, more strongly.
'And do you happen to know if Roxanne has gone upstairs, yet?' she
asked lightly, with a quick, neat turn of her head to meet his eyes. He
wasn't that obtuse, and his smooth skin darkened.
'No. She's in the family room with the others,' he replied shortly.
Her eyes ungentle, her voice soft, she suggested, 'Then I think we'd
better join them, don't you? Petra and Emory were so boringly
obvious.'
For a moment she thought he would balk, but good breeding and
manners won, and he backed from the door to let her precede him
into the hall.
But in the family room, she bid them all a light and lilting good
night, for she'd had quite enough. All she wanted was the privacy of
her strange bed upstairs and to wake in the morning, knowing that
she was leaving that day.
Mr and Mrs Langston had left for the evening, and the upstairs hall
was shadowed and dark. Her lavender dress slid cool and smooth
against her legs as she strode for her door, already envisaging herself
slipping between bed sheets, lying her head down on soft pillow.
A noise behind her, and a bare split second later Pierce said quietly,
'And good evening to you.'
She froze dead still and wished him gone. But then a neat pivot on
her high heel told that he was still there, coming down the hall,
shadowed like he'd been last night. She replied, with finality, 'Good
night.'
He came too close. She felt a thrill of recognition at the faint whiff of
aftershave. 'What?' he said, even lower. 'So soon? It's early yet.'
'But then I was up early, and played strenuous tennis,' she pointed
out, longing to back up a step but refusing to make that revealing
move.
'Oh, yes. This morning. What an energetic performance you gave.'
His lifted hand, moving to touch at the hair of her temple, was feather
light. She couldn't think why it shuddered through her. She used all
manner of light caresses, especially with the opposite sex, as in
straightening a tie, touching the cheek, that sort of thing. They didn't
mean a thing, and yet seemed to help ensnare the man's attention, and
she could now well understand why. 'You were angry this morning,
for some reason,' Pierce said, his voice a mere rumble in his chest. 'I
haven't figured out why.'
'Angry?' she whispered. 'Nonsense! You've a terrific imagination.
Don't look for hidden motives that simply aren't there. You will be
disappointed.'
'I don't know why you bother,' he said then, tapping her chin gently
with his forefinger, rhythmically. 'I don't know why you play the
charade. I don't understand, and I don't have to, but I will tell you
this. Jeffrey, the others, I can see through like glass. You and your
anger, and what goads you to your actions, I cannot fathom. That
tells me louder than anything how different you are.'
Now he was lightly rubbing the backs of his fingers up and down the
side of her neck, and she pulled back with a jerk. Then she bent her
head, and ran her fingers through her hair, furious at how they shook.
She snapped, 'You don't know what you're talking about! For God's
sake, this is a ridiculous conversation.'
'You're angry again. What an intriguing emotion to be wasting on
such a ridiculous conversation. I might almost think I've hit too close
to home.'
'Damn you,' she said, barely audible, abandoning all social light-
heartedness.
'No, really,' Pierce insisted, and now she could clearly hear the smile
in his voice as he shifted closer. 'If not that, tell me. Is it that you're
angry at how you shivered when I did this against the side of your
neck?' His hand, touching warm and soft at her pulse point.
She turned and confronted him, as an animal at bay will, and, with a
light tinkling laugh which almost convinced even her, she fitted her
hand to the back of his head, feeling silken hair and bone structure,
and then she gently propelled him down to press a kiss to his lips,
hers softly open. For a moment, he held perfectly, even rigidly still.
She had a fleeting impression of his body pressed along hers, and
then she stepped back and cocked her head to one side.
'I don't know,' she told him, consideringly, devastatingly. 'Not
anything to shiver or get angry about that I can see. Good night.'
She turned to go.
But he wasn't devastated, as many younger men had been by her
almost contemptuous dismissal from time to time. It had always been
a good weapon held in reserve: crush them when they became too