The Silken Web
“He’s in the office. He asked permission to look through the case-history files for background information.”
“Oh,” Kathleen said indifferently as she stood up and dusted off the seat of her shorts.
She and Edna returned to the compound, and for the rest of the day Kathleen exhausted herself with activity. If thoughts of Erik interfered, she put them down, refusing to think of him for more than moments at a time. Thus, he was constantly on her mind.
He didn’t make an appearance at lunch. She was disappointed that he didn’t see how unaffected she was by the night before, how calm she was, how indifferent to him.
He was at dinner.
He came through the screen door of the dining hall with the bearing of his most regal ancestors, charming whomever came under the light in his eyes, smiling from beneath his mustache with the ease of a worshiped movie idol.
Kathleen chatted with Mike Simpson, who was surprised and delighted with her attention. She sat beside him at the table and engaged the others around them in a steady stream of lively conversation.
After getting his tray, Erik swung his long leg over the bench across the table and down from Kathleen. He sat next to a female counselor who flirted unabashedly. Kathleen gnashed her teeth whenever the girl’s high, s
hrill giggle reached her over the noise in the dining room. She refused to look in their direction.
When the Harrisons joined the table, Edna assessed the situation at a glance, and when her eyes met Kathleen’s, the girl noticed that Edna’s were highly amused.
What’s so funny? she wanted to demand.
After she finished eating, she picked up her tray to return it to the kitchen. Without going out of her way, it was necessary for her to walk past Erik and his adoring companion. She resolved to ignore them.
She stood up and tugged on the bottom of her T-shirt, straightening it, not knowing how the automatic gesture outlined and defined her figure. Casually, she stepped over the bench and took two purposeful steps toward the kitchen.
“Hello, Kathleen.”
She practically tripped as her tennis shoes screeched to a halt, almost as if her feet had usurped her brain’s authority and given an independent command.
She arranged her face into a bright, cheerful smile, then turned her head to look at him.
The girl was draped over his arm, and Kathleen had the wild impulse to set her tray down and yank the girl’s long hair from her head. Instead, she said sweetly, “Hello, Erik, Carol.” Her voice dripped with saccharin and her smile was brilliant. She was the only one who couldn’t see the green fire smoldering in her eyes. “How was your day?”
“Erik stayed cooped up all day in the office, but then he joined my group at the river for their swimming time.” Carol rolled her eyes toward him as if they shared a great secret. Then she met Kathleen’s eyes again. “He didn’t even bring his camera. He said he was there strictly for pleasure.”
Kathleen loathed the smug expression on the other girl’s face, but she was made more furious by the mirthful twitching of Erik’s mustache. “How nice!” she said with false enthusiasm. “He’s been known to need cooling off.”
“Is the tubing trip still scheduled for tomorrow?” Erik asked, all but laughing out loud at Kathleen’s clever slur, which the other girl was too dim to catch.
“I’m still going,” Kathleen said, with emphasis.
“Then so am I,” he said.
“Suit yourself.” She turned her back on them all and, after returning her tray to the window, left the hall.
He was impossible! How dare he be civil! All but laughing at her! She had wanted to shun him, to put him in his place, and he hadn’t even had the gallantry to give her that trite satisfaction. He had forced her to be polite.
How could she have ever entertained the idea that she was falling in love with him? She didn’t love him. She didn’t even like him. She would put him out of her mind and think about something else.
Why, then, when she returned to her cabin, did she forget things? Why, when she started searching for something, did she forget what she was looking for? Why, when she stretched out on her bed, did she recall vividly how his gentle hands and burning mouth had delighted and tormented her body?
His mustache wasn’t prickly at all. It was soft. When he closed his mouth over her nipple, his mustache nudged the plump mound of her breast in a caress all its own.
She rolled over onto her back with a feeble groan, willing her body not to throb with remembrance. Unable to stop herself, her hands sought out the places that had known his touch and tried in vain to rub out the recollections. But the nerves were too alive, too raw, and rather than help, her hands made her even more agitated.
She flopped over onto her stomach and pressed her face into the pillow, unable to rid herself of his image. It was hours later that her mind finally slipped out of the real world into the one dominated by dreams.
And, still, Erik was there.