Chapter 14

Samantha’s glance met his and she knew he was being sincere.

“No,” she decided, her heart aching at the prospect of having to stand up with him at Marianne’s wedding. “No, that wouldn’t be fair to them. Besides, we’re adults, right? Surely we can survive together for a few simple hours.”

She said it without real conviction. She had a strong urge to knock him over the head with something and bring him to his senses, even now. Instead, she left him standing there under the pergola alone.

Nearing the house, she knew she couldn’t face her room and the packing up to go again so soon. There were plenty of other loose ends to tie up, though. She went into the study and shut the door.

Taking the check register out of her desk, she began poring over the unpaid bills, thinking she could at least get him caught up before she left. She happened to glance down at the floor and noticed a crumpled piece of paper that hadn’t made it into the wastebasket. She picked it up, curious. Smoothing it out, she soon discovered it was a check, made out to her for thirty-six thousand dollars.

The door flew open and Alex came in, looking fearful and repentant. The check was still in her hand, so she balled it up and flung it at him.

“What’s this, Alex? Do you want me to go as badly as this?”

He hung his head in guilt.

“You’re a nice girl, Samantha. I just felt like I should do something for you.”

She rose from her chair.

“I’ll finish packing, and then you’ll be well rid of me.”

As she tried to pass, he grasped her arm gently, careful not to hurt her.

“You’re just a child, Samantha. Don’t you see how impossible this is?”

Throwing caution to the winds, Samantha flung her arms around his neck and forced a kiss on him.

How could she go? How could she go, with him thinking she was a child?

Her fingers found the front of his shirt and she ripped it open, sending buttons flying everywhere. He groaned, molding his body to hers.

“Child, am I? We’ll see about that.”

She snaked an arm around his waist and slid her hand down over his ass, caressing him and kissing him wildly as he surrendered to her. She felt - for once in her life - that she was going to make a difference, was going to force things to turn out the way she wanted them to.

Never before had she felt so bold and uninhibited, so at the mercy of her desires.

Samantha’s lips found his throat, his perfect chest. Before she knew what she was doing, she had his belt buckle in her hands and was tugging and fumbling at it.

He swung her up into his arms and carried her over to his bedroom door. He kicked it open and deposited her on the bed. She reached for him, pulled him down on top of her, and assaulted him with more kisses, her mouth oh, so hungry for his.

Urging him onto his back, Samantha straddled him as she’d done that morning in Waikiki, her palms on his warm, solid chest. She ground her hips into his, feeling again the length of his manhood, alive with a will of its own.

Her lips felt tender and swollen from so rough a kiss. Samantha bit his earlobe gently and found her voice.

“How can you call me a child, Alex? How can you call me a child after we’ve been lovers?”

She slid her hand down the length of his body and ripped down his zipper, and then she started shoving his trousers down over his hard hips and muscular thighs. His eyes were suddenly alight with a burning desire, and Samantha sat up and opened her blouse to give him a sample of what would soon follow.

He reached for her, just as she knew he would, but she caught his hands in hers, pressing them against her breasts, loving the feel of his warm touch.

“Say it, Alex,” she instructed, her head dropping back as she arched closer. “Take it back.”

“Oh, God, Samantha, please don’t tease me.”

“Come on, Alex. I need to hear it.”

“All right,” he groaned in compliance. “You’re not a child.”

Looking pleased, she cocked an eyebrow.

“Is that all?”

“You’re not fired, okay? You don’t have to go.”

Her smile burst forth before she could check it, and she bent down to stroke his cheek lovingly.

“I knew you didn’t mean it, Alex. Now what else?”

Without warning, the light suddenly went out of his eyes and he turned away, his face hardening in determination.

“Don’t do this to me, Samantha. Can’t you just feel it? Does it really need to be said?”

Her voice broke.

“Yes.”

He pulled her head down for a kiss, then in a soft, clear voice, he spoke.

“I can’t. Not yet.”

Sitting bolt upright, Samantha wriggled from his grasp and slid down off him.

Now her eyes kindled with a new kind of fire and she hastily re-buttoned her blouse.

“Now what?” he demanded.

“I have my problems, Alex, but being a tramp isn’t one of them. I’m not about to sleep with a man who doesn’t care about me.”

“This is stupid,” he protested, sitting up to gather his clothes about him.

Samantha’s whole body still trembled, so she backed away.

“I do care about you,” he insisted, searching for his buttons. Then, remembering they were gone, he yanked his shirt off and flung it to the floor.

“You think I’m just some little piece of ass, here for your convenience? Well, you’d better think again, my friend, because I’m leaving you.”

His eyes flew open in disbelief and he rushed to her and caught her up in his arms.

“Oh, God, Samantha, you can’t,” he said in a hoarse voice. “You can’t leave me.”

“I don’t trust myself to stay and work here, Alex. Things have gone way too far for that. I’m not about to throw my life away being somebody’s mistress, waiting, wishing...”

Her voice had trailed off and her eyes locked with his. She could still taste his breath on her lips.

He shut his eyes, a pained expression on his face.

“Baby, you don’t understand,” he told her in a sorrowful voice. “I made a vow to myself.”

“Yeah? Well, so did I, Alex. So did I.”

With that, she fled the room and went to pack the rest of her stuff.

She was still without a solid plan for the future, but was no longer afraid to face her parents. On the other hand, she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to go home to them, either, but she drove that thought from her mind as she tried to finish.

A few hours later, there was a knock at her door and Alex entered with a cup of hot tea.

“Mrs. K. asked me to bring this to you,” he said, placing the cup on the nightstand. “Looks like you’re nearly done.”

His tone sounded falsely nonchalant and she noticed that, now the shoe was on the other foot, he didn’t seem quite so smug any more.

“I wasn’t sure what to do with the Titian painting, so I just left it,” she told him.

“I’ll send it to L.A. for you, along with the dressing table,” he offered.

Samantha gazed up at him, faintly surprised. “You’re giving it to me?”

“I bought it for you.”

“Just to use, right? Don’t you want to keep it for your next assistant?”

He looked away. “I haven’t had much luck with assistants. I don’t think I’ll hire another one.”

She picked up the teacup and sipped at it. Poor Alex, he sounded lonely already.

“What’ll you do when I go?” she asked gently. “What’ll you tell Paris?”

Alex smiled bravely. “I don’t know. I don’t suppose I’ll have to tell him anything, do you? Marianne will take care of all that, won’t she?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t think I’ll be going back to my old life,” she told him, setting the cup down. “I don’t feel much like living with my family, and I don’t see how I can go on being Marianne’s friend if she’s married to your best friend. I mean, that would be kind of awkward and uncomfortable, don’t you think?”

Alex took her hand. “Then stay with me, Samantha. We can put this mess behind us and be friends again. You won’t even have to work for me. You won’t have to do anything.”

“What good would that do?”

“You’d be here,” he said helplessly. “You’d be here and I could still see you and talk to you. If you go, who’ll I talk to?”

“You don’t understand, Alex. I couldn’t possibly live here and pretend I’m not attracted to you. It’d drive me crazy, being so close to you and not being able to love you.”

Gathering his courage, he smiled weakly and nodded, patting her hand.

“You’re right, Samantha,” he conceded. “You’re right. You go ahead and go. The last thing in the world I want to do is make you unhappy.”

He lifted her hand to his lips and then let it go, and before she knew it, he slipped from the room and was gone.

At breakfast the next day, Samantha summoned the courage to tell him she was ready to leave. They decided she’d leave all of her things with him, except for the two suitcases and her carry-on bag. Alex promised to send her things to her as soon as she got settled someplace, and within the hour, they were headed back over his bumpy driveway for the airport.

Once out on the highway, Alex glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. For a moment, he said nothing, but then he started to speak.

“I thought I could take this,” he said mournfully, running a distraught hand through his hair. “I thought I could take this if I had to, but I can’t. I can’t let you go, Samantha.”

He slowed the Jeep to a crawl, and then he pulled over onto the shoulder. Switching off the ignition, he bent his head to the steering wheel and wept.

Samantha, not unmoved herself, waited quietly for him to finish, waited for him to speak again.

“Please don’t leave me, Samantha. You know how I feel about you. Can’t you just trust me?”

“We’ve been over all this, Alex. Whatever happened between you and your wife was a long time ago. Why can’t you get over it?”

His head still bent, he spoke in a barely audible voice.

“I made a vow, Samantha, never to love another woman as long as I live.”

“Why? Because Jennie cheated on you? We’re not all like that, some of us have morals.”

He shook his head.

“It’s not because she cheated, Samantha. It’s because of what I did to her when I found her with that man.”