Renegade Player (11 page)

“Sorry. You must know I’m interested in you, Willy. Maybe I just wanted to make sure I didn’t make the same mistake my predecessor made.”

“Well, if it’s of any interest to you, you did. He—he tried to take me to bed, tried a little too energetically, and—and I hit him and, well, he got angry and called me some not very flattering names and stormed out. Unfortunately, he had been drinking rather heavily before that and he ended up making an even bigger fool of himself by driving into a ditch.”

Kiel was silent for so long Willy thought he might not have heard her. He was probably wondering what anyone
could
say to such a sordid little melodrama, short of laughing at it.

“I understood you were seeing him pretty steadily,” he said after a while in a voice that sounded almost impersonally disinterested. “Why didn’t you want to carry the affair to its logical conclusion? Purely as a matter of interest.”

Provoked, she retorted, “Because I didn’t love him, not that it’s any business of yours!”

“Then why see so much of him in the first place?” he asked with infuriating logic.

She turned to him impatiently. “Good Lord, Kiel, what am I supposed to do, join a convent until a marriage is arranged for me? I like a little social life. I enjoy male companionship—no more, no less than any other red-blooded American girl. Is there something wrong with that? For all I knew, Randy Collier could have been the right man for me. How could I find out without getting to know him better? As it happened, we weren’t all that compatible, and when he tried to promote something I didn’t want, we broke up. Now, are you satisfied?”

He stood up abruptly and crossed the narrow open space to lean against a stay, gazing out in the direction of the channel marker. They had anchored out in the sound beyond the breakwater because all the spaces along the docks were filled, and now, across the still water came the sound of laughter and a burst of music that was quickly moderated. Willy stared helplessly at the tall, shadowy figure, his legs braced unconsciously against the almost imperceptible motion of the deck, and when he was momentarily revealed by a flash of sheet lightning out over the sound, she could see the rigid set of his shoulders.

She started to speak, clearing her throat and trying again for a light tone. “Turnabout’s supposed to be fair play. What about the life and times of Kiel Faulkner?”

After a moment’s hesitation, when she thought he hadn’t heard her, she turned around to gaze out over the opposite side of the
Tern
, but then he answered her, sounding preoccupied. “It’d bore you, I’m afraid. Maybe we’d better turn in now. I’ll do the dishes if RENEGADE PLAYER you’d like to get through in the head, and then you can have a bit of privacy. Sorry there’s not much separation between boudoir and galley.”

A surge of disappointment swept over her. “Fine,” she said brightly. “It’s been a long day, anyway.”

Kiel crossed the intervening space with two strides and caught at her arms, pulling her up to shake her slightly; and distraught at the way he seemed to push her from one emotional extreme to another, she cried out, “Kiel, what in heaven’s name have I done? Have I said something wrong? Have I offended you in some way? If I have, then I’m sorry, only
tell
me about it! Don’t just—just close me out!”

“I don’t want to close you out, Willy. Lord help me, I don’t want to close you out at all.” With those perplexing words, he drew her unresisting figure to him and with an almost awkward sort of urgency, he kissed her.

At first her arms were trapped at her sides and she was torn between wanting to escape the desperate ardor of his kiss and wanting to respond to it. There was nothing of the practiced expert in his lovemaking now; instead, it was almost as if he were kissing her in spite of himself, and she responded instinctively to the raw emotion she felt in him. With a reluctant whimper, she wrapped her arms around his waist and held herself to him with all her strength.

“I think this is when I’d better pour myself a cup of coffee and tell you the unsavory story of my life,” he murmured against the hollow of her cheek.

“Who needs the story of your life, stranger? What I need right now is . . .” She proceeded to demonstrate and then, with a sharp intake of breath, he swung her up and moved her to the bench, making room for himself beside her. In the still isolation of the night, she felt his hands on her body, drawing forth a response that left her stunned and breathless. Her words—words bom of a glittering sort of wildness that had robbed her of any vestige of responsibility—had pushed him almost too far and now the soft fabric of her loose-fitting caftan proved no barrier to the compelling magic of his hands, and when he moved suddenly and pulled his own shirt over his head, she braced herself for what she knew she had to do.

“Kiel . . she began, hating herself, loving him, wanting him yet knowing they were moving too fast. “Kiel, listen to me.”

“The time for talking is past, darling. We’ll talk later if you insist, but remember, you’re the one who said, Who needs the story of your life.” He lowered his body onto hers and kissed each eye in turn and she could sense a difference in him, a sort of gentleness that melted her last reserve and she pulled him down and captured his mouth hungrily. They’d talk tomorrow, and if tomorrow never came, she’d have tonight, at least.

“Come on, we’ll go inside, darling,” he whispered, a febrile light glowing in his dark eyes. “Remind me to trade this tub in on something larger, hmmm?” He stood up and pulled her up with him and she hung there, limp, trembling with eagerness and trying desperately not to think. “Still in the mood for conversation, love? You know what they say speaks louder than words.”

He ran his hand down over her shoulders to her waist and over the curve of her hip, and at first, all she could hear was the thunder of two hearts, but then came an intrusive note, a thin, irritating, buzzing sound, and even Kiel stiffened away from her, they heard Richy’s voice hailing them from a rapidly narrowing distance.

“My timing leaves a lot to be desired, doesn’t it?” Kiel remarked wryly, turning her toward the hatch. “Go below, darling. I won’t be a minute.”

Before she could disappear, though, Richy roared up and cut the engine, calling out to her in his brash young voice. “Hey, Willy, Dotty says would you get her things together for her and let me take ’em back?”

“What things?” Willy sighed, leaning her hands on the rail as if she lacked the strength to stand, which was not far from the truth.

“I expect he means her night things,” Kiel put in. He did, and by the time Willy had collected Dotty’s nightgown, her toilet things and a change of underwear, she felt nothing except an overpowering weariness. She handed them over to the voluble Richy and he took them without even pausing in his recital of the types and weights of billfish that had been taken so far this season.

She turned and made her way below, pulling closed the folding partition that separated her cabin from the narrow companionway. Somehow, she was sure that Kiel wouldn’t come after her, and she was right. Long after she had gone to bed, she could hear his movements overhead, and through the porthole came the drift of cigar smoke. She finally fell asleep, more confused than ever, both about her own contradictory feelings and about Kiel’s. For someone who was only after a quick conquest, he was showing remarkable restraint. Perhaps he only responded to a challenge, and Lord knows, she had long since ceased to be that! How could he help but know how she felt when she melted at his very touch? He followed her into her restless dreams, sometimes wearing the face of Matt Rumark and sometimes Randy Collier, and she awoke a few hours later in dead-calm stillness, hot, sticky and thoroughly out of sorts.

Kiel was doing something to the running rigging and Willy was sipping coffee and waiting for her aspirin to take effect when Dotty returned the next morning. She clambered aboard, her yellow shirtwaist reflecting up on her face to emphasize the expression of almost painful pride there. She had scarcely put both feet over the side before she announced that she and Bill had decided not to wait to get married.

Willy swallowed past an unexpected lump in her throat and embraced her friend, and Kiel offered his best wishes and then busied himself for the next hour or so with a balky halyard winch. When the last of the boats had passed, outriggers bent before the wind as they headed for the fishing grounds offshore, Willy stirred herself and went below to clear away the breakfast things. She had been lying up on the pilothouse, staring out at the channel, but acutely conscious of every move Kiel made as he went about his nautical chores. If he had any thoughts about what had happened the night before, she decided, they had already been relegated to the ranks of the unimportant, for he had greeted her over the breakfast table as naturally as if she were in fact a passenger brought along for the convenience of Dotty Sealy.

When, after testing the winch and finding it running smoothly once more, Kiel suggested that they go ashore and stretch a few legs, Willy readily agreed. Here in the close confinement, it seemed that everywhere she roamed brought vivid memories of a kiss or a caress, and she could do without such reminders. Today, Kiel seemed utterly self-sufficient and any small hope Willy had entertained of becoming important to him was fast fading. She didn’t seem able to get on his particular wavelength today, for some reason. Gone was the intimate mood when a glance was enough to set off a conflagration.

Dotty declined to accompany them, saying that being on a boat always made her sleepy, and Willy closed the door softly, leaving the small brunette curled up with a beatific smile on her face. Something like envy rolled over inside her and she pushed it away and put on her brightest, most impersonal smile as she joined Kiel in the outboard for the short run into the harbor.

Hatteras village had a bright, newly washed look, as if it had rained in the night, although she was certain it hadn’t. The talk among the men and boys at the dock was of whose chances were best of beating the 1,142-pound record of the blue marlin displayed at Oregon Inlet.

Strolling through the village, they inhaled the sun-warmed scent of roses, oleanders and the ever-present saltwater tang, and Willy tried to concentrate on the frame houses and small family graveyards tucked in among lush, dark thickets of cedar, yaupon and live oak, with bees droning drunkenly away from the waxy white blooms of yucca. Instead, her peripheral vision admired the way Kiel’s well-shaped head rested on his powerful neck and shoulders, the lithe way he had of walking, as if he owned the very earth he trod, and she was glad when he suggested they wander into the library and look through any books about the area. At least there’d be other people there to dilute the concentrated essence of splendid virility he radiated.

The day passed with no uncomfortable undercurrents. On the surface, they were easy companions and they talked comfortably of food and cars and land values in the vicinity, and when after a surprisingly good lunch they made their way back to the docks and out to the Tern again, Willy had convinced herself that Kiel was making an attempt to allay any misconceptions about his motives. If he could enjoy her company without once making a pass at her, surely that meant he cared for her?

It was almost with a feeling of anticlimax that Willy watched Kiel raise the anchors and prepare to get under way. She had been lying on deck, drowsing and watching several small boys swimming out from the breakwater after they returned to the Tern, and at the hum of the electric motor it came to her that the weekend was over, to all intents and purposes. Had she expected more of it when they set out?

Not really. Lying there now, with her head resting on her hands, she had to admit that although she had begun the trip with a sense of excitement and expectation, there had been no real goal in her mind, nothing she could point at now and say, I accomplished this, or I failed to accomplish that. She stared at the surface of the water, as still and glassy as a mirror, reflecting the small, puffy-dumpling clouds that drifted slowly over the island and out to sea.

Under that deceptive surface were currents and depths that could draw the unwary swimmer down until there was no escape. Like the water flowing under her, Kiel Faulkner was an unknown quantity, and unless she made up her mind to resist that hypnotically attractive surface, she’d surely come to grief by getting in over her head. Like that water, Kiel was deep and rife with forces it was best not to disturb, so why was it that when she was with him, all wisdom deserted her and she was compelled to skirt disaster in spite of all reason?

They went back up the sound instead of going out through Hatteras Inlet again, using the motor rather than the fitful breeze. It was anticlimactic, but then, so was the entire trip, and Willy moved restlessly from bow to stem, inside and out. Dotty was in a mood of dreamy self-containment that precluded any conversation, and Kiel seemed strangely anxious to end the weekend voyage. Probably cutting his losses, she thought defensively, after having failed to get her into his bed. That had been the point of the whole outing, no doubt, and he was disgusted because she had fallen short of his expectations, even as a member of the crew.

And yet, she couldn’t quite believe that. He was a complex, difficult man and not one to lay all his cards on the table at this stage of the game, and so she’d just have to play along and hope for the best . . . only she wished she knew just what game it was they were playing.

Oregon Inlet was swarming with small boats. While the tournament might be the big thing for those invited to participate, it was evident that there were plenty who were more than satisfied to try their luck in the waters of the inlet for fish that were less glamorous, but more tasty. Willy had packed her few belongings and stowed away all the food in the ice chests, and now she lay on deck again, enjoying the smooth vibrations and feeling the sun beat down through her jeans and shirt.