She'd seen the contempt in Lucky's eyes. She could have dispelled it with a few simple sentences of explanation, but she had held her silence.
He hadn't realized the truth.
When he entered her, he had mistaken the reason for the sudden tensing of her body. He had obviously taken it for passion, not pain. He had misinterpreted her sharp, gasping breath. His previous kisses had prepared her to receive him too well. She was so moist, he hadn't noticed the snugness.
By the time he was buried deep inside her and moving within, it had been too late to consider the consequences of what she was doing. Like him, she had become oblivious to everything except the undulating, swelling sensations that had engulfed them.
She was glad the alarming truth had been obscured by eroticism. If he knew that she was a virgin, this cloudy situation could turn turbulent. Then again, she wished with all her heart that he knew.
Memories of their lovemaking caused a bittersweet ache in the center of her soul. She marveled over it, exulted in the pleasure, and lamented its brevity.
Her office door was suddenly flung open. "You asked to see this article when the copy editor was finished."
She raised her head and brushed the tears off her cheeks, reaching for the papers. "Oh yes, thanks," she told the gofer.
"Say, are you okay?"
"I'm fine."
"Sure?"
She gave him a watery smile and reassured him before he left. Self-pity was an emotion she refused to surrender to. She had welcomed Lucky's fierce, yet tender loving. Because on that night, above all other nights, she had so desperately needed loving.
But wasn't it poignantly ironic that in the arms of a stranger she had glimpsed what could be—should be—and wasn't?
* * *
"Lucky!"
He groaned and covered his tousled head with his pillow. It was immediately wrestled from his grasp. "Go away," he snarled.
"Will you please wake up and tell this woman to stop calling?"
He rolled to his back and blinked his disgruntled sister into focus. She was standing beside his bed, glaring down at him, her mood as tenuous as the narrow straps of her bikini.
"What woman?" he asked hopefully, reaching for the receiver of the telephone extension on his nightstand.
"Susan Young."
If the telephone had suddenly turned int
o a cobra ready to strike, he couldn't have snatched his hand back any quicker.
Sage, with supreme exasperation, plugged in the cord he had previously disconnected, lifted the receiver, and, without bothering to cover the mouthpiece, said, "She's been making a nuisance of herself by calling every hour on the hour for two whole days. Will you please talk to her so I can sunbathe in peace?"
She thrust the phone at him. He caught it, juggled it against his bare chest, then mouthed "brat" as he raised it to his ear. "Susan," he said in a voice that would melt butter twenty yards away, "how are you? Thanks for calling. I was just thinking about you."
Sage poked her index finger into her open mouth, mimicking gagging herself, then sat down on the edge of the mattress, unabashedly eavesdropping on her brother's conversation.
His temperament was touchy at best, but she wasn't intimidated by his formidable frown. "What's been going on?" he said into the receiver.
He listened for a moment, but cut into Susan's diatribe. "I know I haven't been around and haven't called. I wanted to protect you from this mess."
"If she falls for that, she's not only devious, she's stupid."
Lucky shot his sister a threatening look. "Until this mess blows over, I didn't think we should see each other. I didn't want to involve you… Yeah, I know what you offered to tell them, but—" He listened for another while. "Susan, I can't let you do that. I think too much of you."
"Oh please." Sage groaned. "What's she offering to do? Bed the feds?"