She let her gaze travel down the long, superbly fit and muscled body stretched out on the blanket beside her. The red knit shirt he was wearing hugged his wide shoulders and chest, its short sleeves exposing the corded strength of his arms. His Levi's accentuated his narrow hips, flat stomach and hard thighs. Even sleeping, he seemed to exude a raw potent virility, but this no longer repelled her. Somehow, having admitted to him that facially he reminded her slightly of David, had banished all similarity between the two men banished from her mind.
His eyes didn't open, but the mobile line of his mouth quirked in a half-smile. "I hope what you are seeing meets with your approval."
Katie's chagrined gaze flew to the rolling parkland stretching out before her. "It does. The park is beautiful today, the trees as—"
"You were not looking at the trees, señorita"
Katie chose not to answer that. She was glad he had called her señorita; it sounded alien and odd to her, emphasizing the differences between them and neutralizing the effect his blatant masculinity had been having on her. What had she been thinking of, wanting Ramon to kiss her? Getting further involved with him could only lead to disaster. They had absolutely nothing in common; they came from two completely different worlds. Socially, they were miles apart. Tomorrow, for example, she was expected to attend a barbecue at her parents' elegant home on the grounds of Forest Oaks Country Club. Ramon could never fit in with the sort of people who would be there. He would feel ill at ease if she brought him with her. He would be out of place. And the moment her parents discovered that he was a farm laborer who drove a produce truck during the spring, they would very likely make it obvious to Ramon that they didn't think he belonged in their home, or with their daughter.
She would not see Ramon again after today, Katie decided firmly. There could never really be anything between them, and her dawning sexual response to him was a solid enough reason to break off the relationship immediately. It could never lead to anything meaningful or lasting.
"Why have you drawn away from me, Katie?"
His penetrating black eyes were open, searching her face. Katie made absorbing work of smoothing the blanket beneath her, then lying back on it. "I don't know what you mean," she said, closing her eyes and deliberately shutting him out.
His voice was low-pitched and sensual. "Would you like to know what I see when I look at you?"
"Not," she said primly, "if you're going to sound like an amorous Latin lover when you tell me. And from the tone of your voice, I think that's exactly what you were going to do." Katie tried to relax, but in the charged silence that followed her words it was impossible. A few minutes later, she sat up abruptly. "I think it's time I got back home," she announced, already scrambling to her knees and beginning to repack the picnic hamper. Without a word, Ramon stood up and began folding the blanket.
The strained silence during the drive home was broken only twice by Katie who, in the hope of atoning for her earlier rudeness, made two attempts at conversation only to be rebuffed by Ramon's monosyllabic replies. She was ashamed of her snobbish thoughts, embarrassed for the way she had spoken to him, and angry because he wouldn't let her smooth things over.
By the time he swung the Buick Regal into the parking space in front of her door, Katie wanted nothing more than to end the day, even if it was only three o'clock. Before Ramon could come around the car for her, she shoved open the door and practically leaped out.
"I will open the door for you," he snapped. "It is a gesture of common courtesy."
Katie, who realized for the first time that he was bitingly angry, was suddenly incensed at his obstinacy. "It may surprise you to hear this," she announced as she stormed up the steps and jammed her key into the lock, "but there is nothing wrong with my hands and I am perfectly capable of opening a damned car door. And I don't see why you should be courteous to me when I have been absolutely obnoxious to you!"
The angry humor of this remark was not lost on Ramon, but it was totally eclipsed by her next one. As she flung open the door to her apartment she turned around in the doorway and said furiously, "Thank you, Ramon. I had a very nice time."
Katie, who had no idea why Ramon had burst out laughing, was relieved that he wasn't still angry, and suddenly very wary of the way he had followed her into her apartment, firmly closed the door behind him, and was now looking at her with an unmistakable expression on his face.
His smoothly spoken words were part invitation, part order: "Come here, Katie."
Katie shook her head and took a cautious step backward, but an answering quiver was tingling up her spine.
"Is it not the custom of liberated American women to show their appreciation for having 'a very nice time' with a kiss?" Ramon persisted.
"Not all of them," Katie croaked. "Some of us just say 'thank you.'"
A faint smile touched his mouth, but his heavy-lidded gaze dropped to the inviting fullness of her lips, lingering there. "Come here, Katie." When she still balked, he added softly, "Are you not curious about how Spaniards kiss and Puerto Ricans make love?"
Katie swallowed convulsively. "No," she whispered.
"Come here, Katie, and I will show you."
Hypnotized by that velvet voice and those mesmerizing black eyes, Katie went to him in a trance that was a combination of fright and excitement.
Whatever she expected when she walked into Ramon's arms, it was not to find herself crushed in an embrace of steel and swept soaring off into some thick sweet darkness where the only feeling was of his parted lips moving ceaselessly on hers; the only sensation, the waves of liquid heat that raced through her in the wake of his caressing hands. "Katie," he whispered hoarsely, dragging his mouth from hers and kissing her eyes, her temple, her cheek. "Katie," he repeated in an aching whisper as his mouth again took possession of hers.
It seemed an eternity before he finally lifted his head. Weak and trembling, Katie laid her cheek against his hard chest and felt the violent pounding of his heart. She was utterly devastated by what had just happened. She had been kissed more times than she could remember, and by men whose technique had been practiced and perfected until it was almost an art form. In their arms, she had felt pleasure— not this mindless burst of joy followed by fierce longing.
Ramon's lips brushed the shining hair atop her head. "Now, shall I tell you what I think when I look at you?"
Katie tried to answer lightly, but her voice was nearly as husky as his. "Are you going to sound like an amorous Latin?"
"Yes."
"Okay."
His chuckle was rich and deep. "I see a beauty with red gold hair and the smile of an angel; and I remember a princess who stood in that singles' bar looking very displeased with her subjects; then I hear a witch telling a man who was making advances to her, that her roommates were lesbians." He laid his hand against the side of her face, his fingers tenderly brushing her cheek. "When I look at you, I think you are my angel-princess-witch."
The way he referred to her as "his" brought Katie's drifting spirit plummeting back to reality. Abruptly pulling free of Ramon's arms, she said with false brightness, "Would you like to walk down to the pool? It opened today, and everybody from the apartment complex will be out there." As she spoke she jammed her hands into her back pockets, caught the way Ramon's glance slipped to the straining fabric of her T-shirt across her breasts, and hastily removed her hands.
One black brow arched in mild inquiry, silently asking why she objected to having his eyes on her when he had just had his hands on her. "Of course," he said, "I would enjoy seeing your pool and meeting your friends.''
Once again Katie felt uncomfortable with him. He seemed like a dark, foreign stranger who was too intensely interested in her. Added to that, she was leery of him now, and with good reason. She knew when a man intended
to maneuver her into bed, and that was where Ramon wanted her. As soon as possible.
Sliding glass doors opened off the back of her living room onto a small patio enclosed by a stockade fence that provided privacy. Two redwood loungers with thick flowered cushions were strategically placed in the center for sunbathing. Behind them, and on both sides, were scattered a profusion of Katie's lush plants, some of which were already blooming.
She stopped beside a redwood planter overflowing with red and white petunias. With one hand on the door in the stockade fence, Katie hesitated, trying to think of how to phrase what she wanted to say.
"You have a beautiful apartment," Ramon commented behind her. "The rent must be very expensive."
Katie swung around, instantly seizing on Ramon's idle comment as a perfect means of drawing attention to the differences between them, and hopefully, cooling his ardent intentions. "Thank you. As a matter of fact, the rent is very high. I live here because it's reassuring to my parents to know that my friends and neighbors are the right sort of people."
"Rich people?"
"Not rich necessarily, but successful, socially acceptable people."
Ramon's face was a mask, wiped clean of all expression. "Perhaps it would be better then, if you did not introduce me to your friends."
One look at that aloof, handsome face, and Katie again felt ashamed of herself. Raking an agitated hand through her hair, she drew a determined breath and confronted the real issue: "Ramon, despite what just happened between us in my apartment, I want you to understand that I am not going to go to bed with you. Now or ever."
"Because I am Spanish?" he asked dispassionately.
Katie's fair complexion bloomed with chagrin. "No, of course not! Because...." She smiled derisively. "To use a hackneyed phrase, 'I'm just not that kind of girl.'" Feeling much better now that everything was out in the open between them, she turned back toward the door in the fence. "Well, shall we go down and see what's happening at the pool?"