September Morning

“Feeling reckless, little girl?” he asked quietly.

“It's more like self-preservation, Blake,” she admitted softly, peeking up at him over the empty glass as she held its coolness to her pink lips. “I was getting my nerves numb so that it wouldn't bother me when you started giving me hell.”

He took a draw from his cigarette. “It was six months ago,” he said tightly. “I've forgotten it.”

“No you haven't,” she sighed, reading the cold anger very near the surface in his taut face. “I really didn't know what Jack had in mind. I probably should have, but I'm not very worldly.”

He sighed heavily. “No, that's for sure. I used to think it was a good thing. But the older you get, the more I wonder.”

“That's just what Maude was saying,” she murmured, wondering if he could read people's minds.

“And she could be right.” His eyes narrowed to a glittering darkness as he studied her in the revealing little dress. “That dress is years too old for you.”

“Does that mean it's all right with you if I grow up?” she asked sweetly.

One dark eyebrow rose laconically. “I wasn't aware that you needed my permission.”

“I seem to, though,” she persisted. “If I try to do anything about it, you'll be on my neck like a duck after a June bug.”

“That depends on what sort of growing-up process you have in mind,” he replied, reaching over to crush the cigarette into an ashtray. “Promiscuity is definitely out.”

“Not in your case, it isn't!”

His head jerked up, his eyes blazing. “What the hell has my private life got to do with you?” he asked in a voice that cut like sheer ice.

She felt like backing away. “I…I was just teasing, Blake,” she defended in a shaken whisper.

“I'm not laughing,” he said curtly.

“You never do with me,” she said in a voice like china breaking.

“Stop acting like a silly adolescent.”

She bit her lower lip, trying to stem the welling tears in her soft, hurt eyes. “If you'll excuse me,” she said unsteadily, “I'll go back and play with my dolls. Thank you for your warm welcome,” she added in a tiny voice before she pushed her way through the crowd away from him. For the first time, she wished she'd never come to live with Blake's family.

Chapter Two

For the rest of the evening she avoided Blake, sticking to Nan and Phillip like a shadow while she nursed her emotional wounds. Not that Blake seemed to notice. He was standing with Maude and one of the younger congressmen in the group, deep in discussion.

“I wonder what they're talking about now?” Phillip asked as he danced Kathryn around the room to one of the band's few slow tunes.

“Saving water moccasins,” she muttered, her full lips pouting, her eyes as dark as jade with hurt.

Phillip sighed heavily. “What's he done now?”

“What?” she asked, lifting her flushed face to Phillip's patiently amused eyes.

“Blake. He hasn't been in the same room with you for ten minutes, and the two of you are already avoiding one another. Talk about repeat acts!”

Her rounded jaw clenched. “He hates me, I told you he did.”

“What's he done?” he repeated.

She glared at his top shirt button. “He said…he said I couldn't be promiscuous.”

“Good for Blake,” Phillip said with annoying enthusiasm.

“You don't understand. That was just what started it,” she explained. “And I was teasing him about not being a monk, and he jumped all over me about digging into his private life.” She felt herself tense as she remembered the blazing heat of Blake's anger. “I didn't mean anything.”

“You didn't know about Della?” he asked softly.

She gaped up at him. “Della who?”

“Della Ness. He just broke it off with her,” he explained.

A pang of something shivered through her slender body, and she wondered why the thought of Blake with a woman should cause a sensation like that. “Were they engaged?”

He laughed softly. “No.”

She blushed. “Oh.”

“She's been bothering him ever since, calling up and crying and sending him letters…you know how that would affect him.” He whirled her around in time to the music and brought her back against him loosely. “It hasn't helped his temper any. I think he was glad for the European trip. She hasn't called in over a week.”

“Maybe he's missing her,” she said.

“Blake? Miss a woman? Honey, you know better than that. Blake is the original self-sufficient male. He never gets emotionally involved with his women.”

She toyed with the lapel of his evening jacket. “He doesn't have to take his irritation out on me,” she protested sullenly. “And at my homecoming party, too.”

“Jet lag,” Phillip told her. He stopped as the music did and grimaced when the hard rock blared out again. “Let's sit this one out,” he yelled above it. “My legs get tangled trying to dance to that.”

He drew her off the floor and back to the open veranda, leading her onto the plant-studded balcony with a friendly hand clasping hers.

“Don't let Blake spoil this for you,” he said gently as they stood leaning on the stone balustrade, looking out over the city lights of King's Fort that twinkled jewel-bright on the dark horizon. “He's had a hard week. That strike at the London mill wasn't easily settled.”

She nodded, remembering that one of the corporation's biggest textile mills was located there, and that this was nowhere near the first strike that had halted production.

“It's been nothing but trouble,” Phillip added with a hard sigh. “I don't see why Blake doesn't close it down. We've enough mills in New York and Alabama to more than take up the slack.”

Her fingers toyed with the cool leaves of an elephant-ear plant near the balcony's edge as she listened to Phillip's pleasant voice. He was telling her how much more solvent the corporation would be if they bought two more yarn mills to add to the conglomerate, and how many spindles each one would need to operate, and how new equipment could increase production…and all she was hearing was Blake's deep, angry voice.

It wasn't her fault that his discarded mistresses couldn't take “no” for an answer, and it was hardly prying into his private life to state that he had women. Her face reddened, just thinking of Blake with a woman in his big arms, his massive torso bare and bronzed, a woman's soft body crushed against the hair-covered chest where muscles rippled and surged…

The blush got worse. She was shocked by her own thoughts. She'd only seen Blake stripped to the waist once or twice, but the sight had stayed with her. He was all muscle, and that wedge of black, curling hair that laced down to his belt buckle somehow emphasized his blatant maleness. It wasn't hard to understand the effect he had on women. Kathryn tried not to think about it. She'd always been able to separate the Blake who was like family from the arrogant, attractive Blake who drew women like flies everywhere he went. She'd kept her eyes on his dark face and reminded herself that he had watched her grow from adolescence to womanhood and he knew too much about her to find her attractive in any adult way. He knew that she threw things when she lost her temper, that she never refilled the water trays when she emptied the ice out of them. He knew that she took off her shoes in church, and climbed trees to hide from the minister when he came visiting on Sunday afternoon. He even knew that she sometimes threw her worn blouses behind the door instead of in the clothes hamper. She sighed heavily. He knew too much, all right.

“…Kathryn!”

She jumped. “Sorry, Phil,” she said quickly, “I was drinking in the night. What did you say?”