Spring fancy

acceptance of the inevitable, and with something else, trembling, breathless loving.

'Joseph, what have I done?' She spoke of the invitations, of course.

But he wouldn't have her asking of them now. 'You've made me fall in love with you. I love you, Winn. Take me home with you.'

'For the night, Joseph?' she asked uncertainly.

'Yes, for the night, for only tonight if it's all I can have.'

'Yes, Joseph, oh, yes, darling. I think it's time I find out if you're right about a lot of things.'

He pushed himself from her, sat back on his haunches with one of his knees on either side of one of hers. Their eyes were polarized now, unable to break apart. He caught her hand and rolled to the balls of his feet, pulling her up with him.

Chapter 9

S he stood in the shower, listening to the spray echo through the ceramic enclosure of the deserted locker room. Her eyes were closed, her face uplifted, slick palms working the bar of soap. She supposed the guilt would come later, but now there was nothing except sweet anticipation and a painful ache in the center of her chest from sexual suppression. How many weeks had it been since she'd met Joseph Duggan and recognized the vibrant carnality trembling between them? Only eight, yet as each of those weeks had passed, it'd left her more and more certain that her body pined for his.

She opened her eyes, stared at the nozzle of the shower, backed away from the warm liquid needles and ran the bar of soap around her neck and both breasts, down her belly, across her hips and down her legs. She disdained the cloth, using her own hands instead to cleanse her skin and feel the quivering nerve endings just beneath its surface. Her breasts felt engorged with eagerness, the nipples hard and pitted like steel thimbles.

Oh, I want him. When was the last time I felt this way? This ready? She had repressed all her bodily urgings for Joseph Duggan until, now, after the stimulus of lying beneath him, they retaliated. Tonight there would be no denial. Tonight… she gasped. And bent quickly to wash her legs and feet instead. Hurrying now. Hurrying.

Her shampoo smelled faintly of lily of the valley. She wrapped a towel turban fashion around her head and secured the loose end at her nape, then dressed in a pair of red nylon knit shorts and a simple white U-neck pullover, slipping these over panties only, no bra. She stuffed her shoes and socks into her tote bag and padded out barefoot to meet Joseph.

He was waiting outside the door to the locker room, barefoot, too, wearing nothing but the pair of faded cutoff denim shorts he'd worn on the court. Her eyes fell to them, then to his right hand in which he held a wad of something cotton and white-his underwear?

'I took off in such a hurry I didn't think about clean clothes,' he explained. Oh, God-it was his underwear! Her dastardly eyes dropped to the fringe of the faded blue jeans. They were slightly stretched, untidy with drooping threads, and cut off so high that the tip of one white pocket peeped out at the leg line. His hard leg protruded from the soft blue cloth, creating an arresting contrast in textures and filling her imagination with what he must look and feel like naked inside the cutoffs.

The surge of sensuousness she'd experienced in the shower magnified a hundredfold. She raised her eyes and found him studying her breasts, obviously unbound within the scoop-neck shirt, and even as he looked, they started puckering. He swallowed and raised his eyes to the towel wrapped around her head.

When Winn spoke, her voice sounded as if she had strep throat. 'I forgot my brush, so I'll leave this on till I get home.' But neither of them made a move toward the stairs leading up and out. Then, when they finally did, they jerked as if they'd got a load of buckshot in the tail.

Walking up the steps just ahead of him, she felt his eyes on her back, and the sensation was almost as palpable as a physical touch. In the lobby he slipped a hand along the bar of steel that crossed the heavy plateglass door at waist level. She saw nothing but his bare arm as he pushed the door wide and let her pass before him. His rusty pickup was parked next to her car in the deserted parking lot. Overhead a bluish light buzzed, and insects sent up a humming around it. Instinctively she headed for her own car, and just as she reached it, his hands clasped hers.

'Winn, if you'd like, I can leave my truck here so it won't have to sit in your driveway all night.'

His offer brought back reality: they had made one conscious choice, and one only. To become lovers for the night. Beyond that, nothing had been decided. If she told him to leave the pickup, their liaison took on overtones of sordidness and dishonesty. And though she didn't want to consider her relationship with Joseph Duggan in that light, there couldn't be another pickup like his old junker in the whole metro area. She was forced to make a choice.

'Yes, you can ride with me. I'll drive you back over here in the morning.'

He dropped her hand, turned away and picked his barefooted way carefully around the tail of her car. He opened the back door, threw his racket and shoes inside, then slipped into the front seat beside her.

She lived only two miles from the club, and it took little time to drive that far along deserted Seventy-seventh Avenue. But when they reached the intersection at Highway 52, the light was red. As they sat, waiting for it to change, he studied her face, lighted to pink by the reflected glow, her eyes refracting a pair of red dots from the overhead traffic light. He sensed guilt coming to give her second thoughts and slid across the seat, put an arm around her shoulders and turned her face to him with the pressure of a single finger on her jaw.

'Winn, I won't be a hypocrite and tell you not to think of him. But when you do, and I know you will more than just once during the night, will you think of me, too, and remember that I love you?'

The light turned green in her eyes. She clutched the wheel and left her foot on the brake. I love you, too, Joseph, she thought but could not say it. To do so would be unfair to both of them. Instead she lifted her lips to his, touching his jaw with her fingertips-it was rough in contrast to the sleek satin of his mouth as his lips parted and the tip of his tongue greeted hers.

When the kiss ended, Winn said softly, 'And I won't be a hypocrite and say I'm going to put him from my mind because he's there right now, and you know it.'

'Then I'll do my best to get him out of it temporarily if you'll just drive on through this green light, Winn Gardner, and take us to someplace a little less public than the intersection of Highway 52 and Seventy-seventh Avenue.'

But the light had turned red again, and they had a full three minutes more to blandish each other with lips and tongues.

At the town house the For Sale sign was still perched on the boulevard. The lights illuminated it momentarily, then arced around and a moment later died with the engine. Joseph turned to study Winn, but now that the moment was here, she was nervous. She opened her door, leaving him to do likewise and follow her up the sidewalk and the three steps leading to her front door.

There, he didn't reach to take the keys from her hand, but took her tote bag instead, leaving her with both hands free. Still she felt inept, and it seemed forever before she found the hole in the lock.

Finally the dead bolt clicked back, and she led the way inside into the dark recesses of her tiny front foyer and the living room, listening to the soft thunk of the door closing behind him, then the almost imperceptible shush of his bare feet on the carpet. She reached blindly and found his hand. He followed, recognizing the direction in which she led him, turning right along the short hall leading past the bathroom to her bedroom. Another right turn and he knew he was standing at the foot of her bed with the high dresser to his left and the old-fashioned dressing table to his right. Her fingers clutched his rather frantically now, and he felt her trembling.

Did she expect him to drop her on the bed in the dark, and afterward creep out like a clandestine debaucher? Did she think that if it happened under cover of darkness, it would be easier to forget later?

He slipped from her fingers and found the wall switch in the dark. A pair of matched boudoir lamps flashed on, reflecting themselves from the mirror of the ancient dressing table.

Winn's face was in shadow as she whirled to face Joseph. His hand was still on the light switch. 'If I'm going to have only one night with you, I certainly don't intend to have it in the dark. I want some memories to take away