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  ''I'd forgotten how big it is," Barrie mused. "We used to do a lot of entertaining," Corlie reminded her. She glared at Dawson. "Not anymore."

  "I'll remember you said that," he replied. "Perhaps we'll throw a party for Mrs. Holton when she gets here."

  "That would make a nice change," Corlie said. She winked at Barrie. "But I expect she's going to be something of a nuisance to a newly engaged couple. I'll help run interference."

  She smiled and went off to make coffee.

  "Oh, dear," Barrie murmured, seeing more complications down the road.

  Dawson shoved his hands into his pockets and searched her face. "Don't worry," he said. "It will all work out."

  "Will it?" She grimaced. "What if Mrs. Holton sees right through us?"

  He moved a little closer, near enough that she could feel the warmth of his body. "Neither of us is used to touching or being touched," he remarked when she stiffened. "That may be awkward."

  She remembered how he'd pushed away the woman at the party in Tucson. Barrie was afraid to come that close, but they were supposed to be engaged and it would look unnatural if they never touched each other.

  "What are we going to do?" she asked miserably.

  He sighed heavily. "I don't know," he said honestly. Slowly his hand went out, and he touched her long, wavy dark hair. His fingers were just a little awkward. "Maybe we'll improve with some practice."

  She bit her lower lip. "I. . .hate being touched," she whispered in a rough whisper.

  He winced.

  She lowered her eyes to his chest. "Didn't you notice, at the party? I had two men at my feet, but did you see how much distance there was between us? It's always like that. I don't even dance anymore...!"

  44

  His hand withdrew from her hair and fell to his side. "God forgive me," he said miserably. "I don't think I can ever forgive myself."

  Her eyes came up, shocked. He'd never admitted guilt, or fault before. Something must have happened to change him. But what?

  "We'll have to spend some time together before she gets here," he said slowly. "And get to know each other a little better. We might try holding hands. Just to get used to the feel of each other."

  Tentative. Like children on a first date. She wondered why she was being so whimsical, and smiled.

  He smiled back. For the first time in recent memory, it was without malice or mockery.

  "Antonia said that Mrs. Holton was very attractive," she remarked.

  "She is," he agreed. "But she's cold, Barrie. Not physically, but emotionally. She likes to possess men. I don't think she's capable of deep feelings, unless it's for money. She's very aggressive, single-minded. She'd have made a good corporate executive, except that she's lazy."

  "Did her husband leave her well-fixed?" she asked curiously.

  "No. That's why she's trying to find a man to keep her."

  She bristled. "She ought to go back to school and keep herself," she said shortly.

  He laughed softly. "That's what you did," he agreed. "You wouldn't even take an allowance from George. Or from me."

  She flushed, averting her eyes. "The Rutherfords put me through college. That was more than enough."

  "Barrie, I never thought your mother married my father for his money," he said, reading the painful thought in her mind. "She loved him, just as he loved her."

  "That wasn't what you said."

  His eyes closed. "And you can't forget, can you? I can't blame you. I was so full of hatred and resentment that I lashed out constantly. You were the most easily reachable...and the most vulnerable." His eyes opened again, cold with self-contempt. "You paid for every sin I accused your mother of committing."

  "And how you enjoyed making me pay," she replied huskily.

  He looked away, as if the pain in her eyes hurt him. "Yes, I did," he confessed bluntly. "For a while. Then we went to the Riviera on holiday with George."

  She couldn't think about that. She didn't dare let herself think about it. She moved away from him. "I should unpack."

  "Don't go," he protested. "Corlie's making coffee. She'll probably have cake to go with it."

  She hesitated. Her big green eyes lifted to his, wary and uncertain.

  His face hardened. "I won't hurt you," he said roughly. "I give you my word."

  He was old-fashioned that way. If he made a promise, he kept it. But why should he stop sniping at her now, and so suddenly? Her eyes mirrored all her uncertainties, all her doubts.

  "What's changed?" she asked miserably.

  "I've changed," he replied firmly.

  "You suddenly woke up one morning and decided that you'd give up an eleven-year vendetta?"

  He searched over her face with an enigmatic expression on his darkly tanned face. "No. I discovered how much I'd lost," he said, his voice taut with some buried feeling. "Have you ever thought that sometimes our whole lives pivot on one decision? On a lost letter or a telephone call that doesn't get made?"

  "No, I don't suppose I have, really," she replied. "We live and learn. And the lessons get more expensive with age."

  "You're very reflective, lately," she said, curious. A strand of hair fell over her eyes, and she pushed it back from her face. "I don't think in all the time we've known each other that we've really talked, until the past day or so."

  "Yes. I know." He sounded bitter. He turned away from her to lead the way into the spacious living room. It had changed since she'd lived on the Rutherford ranch. This was the very room where Dawson had so carelessly tossed the little silver mouse she'd given him to his date. But it wasn't the same at all. The furniture was different, Victorian and sturdy in its look, but wonderful to sink into.

  "This room doesn't look like you at all," she remarked as she perched herself in a delicate-looking wing chair that was surprisingly comfortable.

  "It isn't supposed to," he replied. He sat down on the velvet-covered sofa. "I hired a decorator to do it."

  "What did you tell her, that you wanted to adopt someone's grandmother and install her here?" she asked.

  He lifted an eyebrow. "In case you didn't notice, the house is late Victorian. And I thought you liked Victorian furniture," he added.

  She shifted, running her hand along the arm of the chair. "I love it," she confessed in a subdued tone. Questions poised on the tip of her tongue, and she almost asked them, but Corlie came in with a tray of cake and coffee, beaming.

  "Just what the doctor ordered," she said smugly, putting the tray on the big coffee table.

  "Great huge coffee tables aren't Victorian," Barrie muttered.

  "Sure they are. Victorians drank coffee," Corlie argued.

  "They drank tea," she replied, "and out of dainty little china cups and saucers."

  "They also ate cucumber sandwiches," Corlie returned. "Want a few?"

  Barrie made a face. "I'll be quiet about the coffee table if you won't offer me those again."

  "It's a deal. Call if you need anything else." Corlie went out, closing the sliding doors behind her.

  She helped herself to coffee and cake and so did he. As always he took his coffee black while Barrie put cream and sugar in hers.

  "Antonia said that you'd been offered a job heading the math department at your high school next fall," he remarked. "Are you going to take it?"

  She looked up over the rim of her coffee cup. "I don't know," she replied. "I love teaching. But that job is mostly administrative. It would take away the time I had with my students, and plenty of them require extra tutoring."

  He searched her down-bent face. "You...like children, don't you?"

  "Oh, yes." She toyed with her coffee cup, trying not to think about the child they'd made, the one she'd lost so many years ago.

  He sat, waiting, hoping that she might finally decide to tell him her secrets. But the moment passed. She went right on eating cake and drinking coffee, and she didn't make another remark. He was hesitant about bringing it up himself. They had a long way to go before she migh
t feel comfortable talking about something so intimate and painful with him.

  He changed the subject and conversation reverted to impersonal topics. He went into his study to make some phone calls and she went upstairs to unpack.

  She wondered at the change in him, but she was still too raw from the past to let her guard down.

  Supper was a cheerful affair, with Rodge and Corlie sitting at the table with Barrie and a taciturn Dawson. They talked. He listened. He seemed preoccupied, and he excused himself to work in the study. He didn't come back, even when Barrie said good-night to Corlie and Rodge and went up to her old room to go to bed.

  She lay awake for a long time. Being in the house again brought back memories, so many memories, of Dawson and his antagonism. Then, inevitably, her mind went to the Riviera

  It had been a beautiful summer day. Sea gulls had dived and pitched above the white beach where Barrie sat on a big beach blanket and worried about her conservative appearance. Many people were nude. Most of the women were topless. Nobody seemed to pay the least attention, either.

  Barrie wanted to sunbathe without white lines, but she was inhibited at twenty-one, and a little intimidated by Dawson in his white trunks. He was exquisite, and she couldn't keep her eyes off him. A thick thatch of curly gold hair, darker than that on his head, covered his broad chest and narrowed down his flat stomach into his trunks. Long, elegantly powerful legs had the same tan as the rest of his body. She imagined that he normally sunbathed without any trunks at all, although she didn't know for sure.

  The path of her thoughts embarrassed her and she averted her eyes. But her hands toyed with the ties of her bikini top as she thought daringly how it would be to let it fall, to know that Dawson's gaze was on her bare breasts. She shivered with just the thought of it, and wished she were sophisticated and chic like his usual companions, that she had the nerve just once to do something outrageous and shocking.

  She'd glanced at him in what might have seemed a coquettish way as her fingers toyed with the straps and she'd smiled nervously.

  Dawson hadn't realized how inhibited she was. He'd formed the idea that Barrie was a born flirt, that she collected men. He'd always seen her shy attempts at affection as deliberate coquetry, because it was the sort of game the sophisticated women he knew played.

  So when Barrie had darted that curious glance at him, he'd thought she wanted him to coax her into taking off the top. And because she had a lovely young body, and he wanted very much to look at it, he'd played along.

  "Go ahead," he'd murmured in a deep, tender voice. "Untie it, Barrie. I want to look at you."

  She remembered looking into his eyes and seeing the lazy sensuality in them, the calculating narrowness of them.

  "Why the hesitation?" he'd taunted. "You're drawing attention because you're being so damned conservative. None of the other women have any hang-ups about their bodies."

  He nodded toward two young women about Barrie's age, dancing along the beach with only bikini bottoms covering their womanliness.

  She bit her lip, hesitating, turned just sideways from him, toward the beach.

  He'd been beside her, facing her on his knees, his lean hands resting on his muscular thighs. "Barrie?" he'd coaxed softly. And when she looked at him his voice softened and deepened. "Take it off."

  He hypnotized her with forbidden longings, with longburied needs. Her hands fumbled with the single tie at the back of her neck and she loosened it. Her fingers reached around to the other single fastening under her shoulder blades. She looked into his pale green eyes, trembling with

  50 new sensations, flushing at the enormity of what she was doing. And she let the top fall away.

  She remembered even now the feel of his eyes, the soft intake of his breath as he'd looked at her. She had high, firm, full breasts, pale pink, with darker pink crowns that went rigid under the impact of his level gaze.

  She trembled helplessly as he looked his fill. There was a dark flush along his high cheekbones, and he made no pretence of not staring.

  Unexpectedly his eyes lifted to hold hers. Whatever he'd seen there must have told him what he wanted to know, because he'd made a sound deep in his throat and stood up. He seemed to vibrate with some violent emotion. Suddenly he'd bent and slipped his arms under her knees and her back and lifted her off the sand. His eyes stared into hers as he slowly, exquisitely, brought her upper body to his so that her breasts flattened gently in the thick hair that covered his broad chest. His skin was as cool from the breeze as hers was hot from the feelings he aroused in her virginal body. She'd stiffened at the shock of the contact.

  "No one is looking," he said roughly. "No one gives a damn. Put your arms around me and come closer."

  It was shocking, the need she felt. She obeyed him, forgetting her shyness as she ached to feel his body against hers. She remembered burying her hot face in his throat, drinking in the scent of him, feeling his heavy, harsh pulse against her bare breasts as his arms tightened and he walked toward the water with her.

  "Wh... why?" She choked.

  "Because I'm so damned aroused that I can't hide it," he said half angrily. "The only escape is right into the ocean. Or don't you feel it, too, Barrie? A burning deep in your belly, an emptiness that wants filling, an ache that hurts?"

  Her arms contracted and she moaned softly.

  "Yes, you feel it," he breathed as he began to wade into the water. His face slid against hers and his mouth suddenly opened as it sought and found her parted lips. She didn't remember the shock of the water. There was nothing in life except that first, burning sweetness of Dawson's hard mouth on her lips, nothing more than the feel of him in her arms, against her bare breasts.

  Vaguely she was aware that they were in the warm water, that his arms had released her so that he could pull her into an even more intimate embrace. His long legs tangled with hers, and for the first time, she felt the force of his desire for her. They kissed and kissed, there in the water, oblivious to the whole world, to the line of hotels above the shore, the other swimmers, the noise on the beach.

  He moved her, just enough to let his lean hand find and swallow one swollen breast. His tongue eased into her open mouth. His free hand lifted and pulled her, fit her exactly to the hard thrust of him. And she almost lost consciousness at the stabbing ache of pleasure he kindled in her trembling body, there in the water, there in the blue ocean

  She fell asleep with the memories deep in her mind. Unfortunately, those sweet memories merged with some that were much darker. Dawson had finally gained temporary control of himself, and left her alone in the sea to recover from their feverish embraces. But all through the evening meal with George, he'd watched Barrie with eyes that made her feel hunted. The idiotic way she'd smiled at him and encouraged his watchfulness could still make her cringe. She'd thought he was falling in love with her, and she was doing her best to show him that she already felt that way about him. She'd had no idea how he was interpreting her shy flirting.

  But it had all become clear after she'd gone to bed that night. The sliding door on her balcony had opened and

  52 MAN OF ICE

  Dawson had come through it. He'd been wearing a robe and nothing else. Barrie remembered the sweep of his hand as he tore the sheet away from her body, clad only in thin briefs because of the heat and the failing air-conditioning. Her body had reacted at once to his eyes, and even the shock and faint fear hadn't robbed her of the desire that was all too visible to a man of Dawson's experience.

  "Want me, Barrie?" he'd whispered as he threw off his robe and joined her on the bed. "Let's see how well you follow up on those teasing little glances you've been giving me all night."

  She hadn't had the presence of mind to explain that she hadn't been teasing him. She wanted to tell him that she loved him, that he was her life. But his hands on her body were shocking, like the things he whispered to her in the moonlight, like the feel of his mouth surging over her taut breasts while he made love to her as if
he were some demon of the night.

  If she'd been the experienced woman he thought her, it would have been a night to remember. But she'd been a virgin, and he'd been completely out of control. She remembered the faint tremor in the hands that had gathered her hips up to the fierce thrust of his body, his cry of pleasure that drowned out her cry of pain. He whispered to her all through it, his body as insistent as his mouth, his hands, until finally he arched up as though he were on some invisible rack, his powerful body cording with ripple after ripple of ecstasy until he convulsed with hoarse, fierce cries and his hands hurt her.

  She felt no such pleasure. Her body felt torn and violated. She was almost sick with the pain that had never seemed to stop. When he pulled away from her finally, exhausted and sweaty, she winced and cried out, because that hurt, too.

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  She wept, curled into a ball, while he got to his feet and put his robe back on. He'd looked down at her sobbing form with eyes she couldn't see, and she didn't like remembering the things he'd said to her then. His voice had been as brutal as his invasion of her, and she'd been far too innocent to realize that he was shocked and upset by her innocence, hitting out to disguise his own stark guilt. It could have been so different if he'd loved her. But in the darkness of her dream, he was a bird of prey, tearing at her flesh, hurting her, hurting her...

  She didn't realize that she'd screamed. She heard the door open and close, felt light against her eyelids, and then felt hands shaking her.

  "Barrie. Barrie!"

  She came awake with a start, and the face above her was Dawson's. He was wearing a robe, as he had been that night. His hair was damp from a shower, and her mind reverted to the night she'd spent in his arms in France.

  "Don't... hurt me... anymore!" she whispered, sobbing.

  He didn't reply. He couldn't. The terror in those eyes made him sick right through to his soul. "Dear God," he breathed.

  Four

  Barrie saw his face contort and as she came back to awareness, she noticed the room around her, the light fixture overhead. "It's... not France," She choked. Her eyes closed. "Oh, thank God, thank God!"