The Silken Web

“Fine. The children missed you.” And so did I, dammit, she added to herself. “How was the riding?”

“I was rusty for a while, but I finally worked the kinks out.” He seemed admirably humble.

Knowing she looked about twelve years old with her pigtails and shorts and tennis shoes, she shifted uncomfortably under his perusal. Did he remember last night? No sooner had the question entered her mind than his eyes lit on her lips and lingered there. Yes, he remembered, and she felt herself blushing under her deep tan.

“How did you haul your camera?” she asked, with a curiosity she couldn’t restrain.

He smiled, his teeth creating a white slash in his dark face. “It rode in front of me on the saddle.”

“Very ingenious,” she said dryly.

“I’ve learned to improvise.” He smiled deeply again. Was that a dimple under his mustache? “When can you be ready?” he asked suddenly.

“Do you still want to go?” she demurred. “We don’t have to, you know.”

“I know. But I want to,” he leaned down and whispered conspiratorially. “Why do you think I volunteered for that damn packing trip? I didn’t think I could be with you all day, anticipating tonight, and keep my hands off you. I don’t think sex education is included in the curriculum, is it?”

What had happened to all those carefully chosen words she had rehearsed all day? Where, in her befuddled brain, were all those epithets hiding? The sound logic she had pieced together had fled, being replaced by titillating possibilities. Her tongue couldn’t function at all, much less deliver the blistering refusals she had memorized.

She couldn’t meet his gaze. It was too unsettling, too disturbing, and too hypnotic. She darted her green eyes at the trees, the flagpole where the flag hung limply in the still afternoon, and toward the straggling campers and counselors who were wending their way tiredly to their cabins. “About an hour?”

He took a tendril of hair between two of his long, slender fingers. He tugged on it gently before tucking it behind her ear. “Fifty-five minutes,” he said huskily, before he turned on his heel and strode off in the direction of his cabin.

Her thoughts were running rampant as she hastened to her own cabin. What could she wear? She didn’t have anything appropriate! With longing, she thought of her closet at home in Atlanta, where she had designer dresses, gorgeous shoes and racks of accessories, all of which she could buy at whole-sale prices because of her job.

Now, she stared bleakly at the one metal rod in the narrow closet and bemoaned the meagerness of her wardrobe at hand. The cotton print shirtwaist or the voile sundress? She gnawed the inside of her cheek. The print was soft, simple and sweet. And safe. The sundress was soft, simple and sexy. Not so safe. After her shower, she was still debating with herself.

With an impatient shrug at her own silliness, she took her sundress off the hanger. The voile felt like a cloud settling over her flesh. The bodice was cut like a camisole. Lace trimmed straps about an inch wide spanned her bare shoulders. She was saved from total immodesty because the front was tucked and pleated on either side of a row of pearl buttons that stopped at her waist. That provided two layers of the sheer fabric over her breasts. The skirt was full, but she wore flesh-toned panties and a half-slip as meager protection from its sheerness. The sea-green color accentuated her own vivid eyes and highlighted the honey-apricot tone of her skin.

She slid her bare feet into the only pair of high-heeled sandals she had brought with her. She disdained panty hose in the sweltering heat, but had shaved her legs to glossy smoothness and applied a rich lotion that made them silky to the touch.

She twisted her hair up into a knot on the top of her head and secured it with a long gold clip decorated with a nautilus shell. Small gold loops were inserted into her pierced ears. She dabbed herself liberally with Mitsouko just as Erik knocked on her door.

Instinctively, her fluttering hand flew to the base of her throat where she could feel the pounding of her pulse. Stop this! Kathleen ordered herself to no avail. She was far more nervous now than she had been on her first date when the young man had picked her up at the orphanage.

Somehow she forced her reluctant legs across the room toward the screened door. Erik’s silhouette filled the twilight tinted opening.

“Hi,” she said with affected casualness.

He made no pretense of his feelings. His mouth hung open at a ridiculous angle as he toured her body with his wide, stupefied eyes. “Are you the same girl who was in pigtails a mere hour ago?”

“Fifty-five minutes,” she corrected teasingly. His face then returned to normal and he smiled that dazzling smile that always left her feeling dizzy. She had never seen him dressed in anything but jeans. The swimsuit hardly counted as clothing. His appearance left her breathless and lightheaded. His blue shirt fitted his torso to perfection. The camel-colored slacks hugged his hips and thighs like a second skin, the straight legs broke with tailored preciseness on the vamp of polished loafers. The navy blazer was stretched over bunched shoulder muscles as he placed his hands on his hips and eyed her appraisingly.

“You, Ms. Haley, are amazing. Out there,” Erik indicated the camp with a backward jerk of his head, “you look like someone’s beautiful kid sister. Now you look like someone’s beautiful… uh…”

“What?”

“Never mind,” he growled. “What I had in mind to say could get me in trouble. Let’s go.”

He ushered her out the door and toward the Blazer, parked a few yards from her cabin. “I hope you know the way

, because I drove here with one eye on the road and one on an obsolete map.”

Kathleen laughed as she slid into the passenger side of the truck. “I do, but only after coming here for years. Only the natives truly know their way around up here.”

“I believe it,” he said. “Which way?”

She gave him directions to get them underway and then settled against the back of the seat, which was still warm from the truck having been closed up all day. A soft flow of air from the air-conditioning vents soon remedied that. “You don’t seem like the Blazer type to me,” she said musingly.