Chapter 20

Back at the apartment, Paul silently helped me out of my coat. While he hung it up, I went into the living room and plugged in our little Christmas tree. I needed something to bring back the atmosphere of the dance. In spite of the delay the party had created, I still wasn't ready for this moment. I no longer wanted to accuse, to listen, to hear the apologies, the promises. I just wanted to hold him and start over. All the talking wasn't going to matter anyway, at least not to me. The only thing that would keep us apart now was if Paul walked out after hearing about John.

Paul had no more idea how to start this than I did. He stood in the doorway to the living room looking at me helplessly. I moved toward him and he met me halfway across the room and then I was where I wanted to be, in his arms. Our kisses were not sweet, they were fierce. They were not arousing, they were desperate, full of pent up pain and longing. Under all that emotion was a frightened undercurrent; what if we couldn't work this out? What if what was wrong between us was too big for even this much love? I started to cry.

“Don't cry honey,” he said between kisses. “It is going to be all right. You know I love you.”

I didn't think to argue with that. I'd half believed it all along and knew it the moment he stepped off the plane. “Oh, Paul, I love you too! I tried not to! I wanted to forget about you, but…”

His arms were so strong around me, making me feel weak. I kissed him over and over, letting the pain fall away, letting love and hope back in. He was back in my arms, in my life and I didn't care if we ever talked about what happened, didn't want to know, didn't want anything but this. I stopped crying and gave in to wanting him. I couldn't get close enough. I wanted to feel his body, wanted to get closer, wanted to crawl inside his heart and hide there, safe and warm and loved.

As my hands slid up his back he said, “We have to talk,” but he didn't sound like he meant it. His hands were moving over me, lighting the fires. No one had ever felt so good, so right. I was shivering with emotion, desperate to have him make love to me. It wasn't a sexual feeling. The desire for that took a very distant second to another need. I didn't need him in me physically as much as I needed him back in my heart, needed him to want me, take me, claim me back and make everything all right, erase the pain of the last few months with his touch, his body.

I reached to tug his sweater out of his belt, but he said again, “We have to talk, Tess” and this time he stopped me, holding onto my hand.

“No,” I said, feeling a rising panic. “It doesn't matter. I don't want to talk about it. I just want to start over. Now.” I all but attacked him, determined to make him want me more than he wanted to talk, and it was working. He was breathing fast and coming up hard.

I thought it was going to be all right, and was about to step back and take his hand and lead him into the bedroom, but then he stopped and with a shuddered breath said, “Hold on, love…”

I made a sound of protest and covered his mouth with mine, determined to dissuade him. Again I felt him respond and yet again start to pull back. In desperation I slipped my hand between us and slid it down below his waist intending to make it impossible for him to resist. I touched him, massaged him gently with my fingertips. He caught his breath, groaned with pleasure, and then, unbelievably, pulled my hand away.

“I never thought I would say this to you, but stop!” he said with a shaky little laugh.

“I don't want to talk,” I whispered, scared now.

“Tess, I have to know why you left,” he said in a voice that was raw, but not with desire.

His words stunned me. I looked up at him, uncomprehending.

“Why I left?”

“Yes!”

“You know why!” I said, bewildered.

He shook his head. “John wouldn't explain anything. He just kept saying he was staying out of it and I needed to talk to you.”

I took an unsteady step back, realizing what must have happened. “You didn't get my note!”

He looked at me strangely and moved away, reaching into his pocket. He took out his wallet, opened it, and dropped a piece of paper onto the coffee table. I was shaking as I picked up the paper and unfolded it. I didn't need to read it. Memories of writing it that awful morning were burned into my mind. This just wasn't making sense. Why did he ask why I left if he had the note?

“Why did you leave?” Paul asked again.

I sat down hard on the couch. This was too confusing.

“I told you why,” I said, unfolding the note, bewildered as to why he didn't understand. I read the words to him. “I know now there was someone else all along.”

“John says it isn't true. He says you weren't in love with him.”

“What?”

“He says he didn't even talk to you until a month later.”

He thought I meant that I was in love with someone else all along! That would have been funny if he had said any name but John's. I stared up at him, my blood turning to ice water. It wasn't true, though. Even with what happened between John and me later, it wasn't true. Why did he even think that? Was he so sure I didn't know about his girl friend, or, worse yet, didn't he consider his behavior to be a problem? This was unreal.

“Wh... wh... why did you think that, that I was in love with him?” I stammered.

“What else could I think? I tried to ring you on Sunday afternoon and there was no answer. I thought perhaps you had all gone somewhere for the day, but when it got late and there was still no answer, I didn't know what to think. I tried again Monday morning and by noon decided to drive out there thinking perhaps the phone was out, but I tried one more time. Cyn's mother finally picked up. She said they had just gotten back from Bristol and you were gone.”

He laughed grimly. “I thought she meant you were out and I was surprised you would go out when you were expecting me back, but when I asked where you had gone… ” He stopped, unable to even say how he felt when told I was really gone. His body said it. His shoulders dropped and he sagged as if all the energy just drained out of him. He turned and walked away from me to stand looking out the window.

“She said you had left a note,” he resumed, his voice flat and far away. “I went straight over, thinking something had happened, some emergency here. I couldn't believe it when I read it. It made no sense. Mrs. Powell said they had been gone all weekend and she didn't know anything except that you were gone. I wanted to talk to Cyn. I thought she might know something, anything, but she was lying down and her mum wouldn't wake her. She said Cyn hadn't slept last night because John had just dropped it on her that he wanted a divorce and he was gone too.”

There was a long silence before he went on. “I didn't know what to think. Those first few days… No one seemed to know where John was.” Paul turned to look at me. “What the fuckin' hell was I supposed to think, Tess?” There was no real anger in voice, only pain.

No wonder he thought I had left him and run off with John. It never, ever occurred to me that he might think we had left together. I never even knew that John had left the same weekend I had. He had never said and I just assumed it was a week or so later. Because the events of my leaving England and sleeping with John were separated by two months, my leaving Paul and John leaving Cyn simply were not at all connected in my head. But to Paul… I shook my head, feeling dizzy, disoriented. What was he supposed to think? What would I have thought if I had been in his place?

“I don't know, Paul,” I said, helpless to argue against something that must have seemed so obvious at the time.

“Well, I thought what everybody else thought. That you and that sodding bastard—”

”What everybody else thought?!”

“Christ, Tess. I wasn't the only one to think you and John were together!”

“Oh no. Oh God,” I moaned, feeling sick. Everyone in London who mattered to me—did they think John and I had some sleazy thing going? That we had been screwing around the whole time? That I was the reason he left Cyn? I felt totally humiliated. I looked up at Paul, tears blurring my eyes. “The others didn't… They didn't think I would do something like that, did they? They couldn't have believed…”

Paul came back to me and sat on the trunk that was our coffee table. He took my hands in his. “No one knew what to think. No one wanted to believe it. Pattie insisted it couldn't be true but…”

God, that hurt. How could they even think for a moment… How could Paul? He should have known. I loved him so damn much, how could he have believed it? Anger erupted right through the hurt. Even if what John and I had done was wrong to some people, it was light years away from what they thought we had done! I jerked my hands away from him, got up and went into the kitchen to get the box of Kleenex from the top of the refrigerator. I blew my nose, wiped my eyes and tried to tell myself it was all right now. John had told them it wasn't true.

I stood in the doorway between the kitchen and living room and looked at Paul. He was still sitting on the coffee table, head down, elbows on his knees, hands clenched together in front of his face.

“Dammit, why didn't you just ask John?!” I demanded. “He would have told you it wasn't true!”

“I never talked to him!” Paul answered with a flash of defensive anger as he turned to look up at me. “We didn't know where he was for days. Cyn didn't even know when Brian asked her. Then when John did ring up Brian, Brian never asked about you. He didn't know you were gone too!” The anger in his voice broke there. “Christ, Tess,” he groaned. “I wasn't going around telling people I thought you were with him. I didn't want to even think that!”

I was too angry to care about his wounded pride right then. “So no one ever even bothered to ask John?”

Paul sighed. “Tess, everything went to hell when Brian found out why I wanted to talk to John. He was in a panic, thinking that the press were going to find out and that would be the end of everything. He went into one of his moods and wouldn't come into the office, wouldn't call John, wouldn't talk to me, wouldn't do anything for days. By then the press were following John in the States. Not a word about you. I started to think I was wrong. If you had been with him it would have been hard to keep quiet.”

“So you didn't believe it after all!” I said. “But when I talked to you on the phone that day…” I trailed off, remembering the cold words.

Paul made a strangled sound and rubbed his forehead as if he had a pounding headache, then stood up to face me, one hand up as if to say “Stop.”

“That call… that was after Brian finally came ‘round and contacted John. Or tried to. He was told John was on his way to Minneapolis.”

“To see me.”

“Or with you. I didn't know. I assumed you had gone back to school and he went to see you on weekends or as often as he could. It didn't matter anymore. Either way it was you and John. I… I just gave up then.”

“Why didn't you call me?” I asked, still angry, still smarting over his lack of trust in me. “I understand why you didn't call after that, but up until then…”

“At first I didn't want to call. If it were true, if you were with John, I didn't want to have to hear you say it. Then when there was nothing in the press about you being with John, I… I dunno. I sat by the phone and tried to think what to say. I knew that even if it wasn't because of John, you wouldn't have left if you didn't think you had to. If you thought we had a chance together you would never have left. So… I didn't call. I couldn't.” He gestured at my note on the trunk. “ You had asked me not to.”

I was caught off guard by this simple statement of how much he loved me, enough to respect my request even when he didn't understand. My anger just evaporated. I went to him and put my arms around him, my head on his shoulder, at a loss for words and hurting for him as well as myself now. He held onto me, and I stood there in silence, letting it all sink in and trying to sort out how it had gotten so messed up. It seemed like somehow, over those first few weeks, someone, somehow could have found out I hadn't left with John. Cyn would have talked to John by then, and even if Brian didn't want to deal with it, Paul could have gotten Alistair to find out.

I was so distracted by this whole mess of Paul thinking that I had left with John—and so aware of what had happened with John—that it took another glance at the note lying on the coffee table to bring me back to the truth. I had done nothing wrong. He had. He had cheated and lied. This whole misunderstanding about John was not the problem. Paul was.

I felt cold misery reclaiming me and his arms around me were suddenly confining, not comforting at all. I stepped abruptly away from him and turned away from his surprised look. I walked to the far end of the sofa and sat down because my legs were shaky. This was even worse than I had thought. I thought he came to apologize for hurting me and here he was telling me how miserable he had been! How could he pretend he had done nothing wrong? Was he so sure I couldn't have found out? Or was having another woman in his life so inconsequential, so normal for him he just discounted it? If that was true, there was no point in going on even if he did love me. I cursed John mentally for setting this up and then looked up at Paul.

He was watching me. Worried? Wary? Or just confused? I wasn't sure what the look on his face meant. I reached over and picked up the note and braced myself. It was time to get this over. I had to concentrate to make my mouth form the next words, the question that would break this wide open.

“When you read my note, why did you assume that I meant I had someone else all along, not you?”

He looked at me, considering. He didn't answer right away. The seconds ticked by as he thought about it… thought long enough to make it premeditated murder: He opened his mouth and killed every hope that I had for us.

“Because I didn't,” he said.

The world went black. He wasn't about to tell me the truth, much less apologize! Excuses and promises were not going to happen either. Nothing was going to happen. This was worse than anything I had imagined. No truth, not even apologetic white lies about what she meant to him and why he was with her that night. Just one big lie.

“Don't do this to us, Paul,” I pleaded as I began to cry in unpretty, unfeminine, runny nose, choking sobs. He came to me, sat next to me, and tried to put his arms around me but I kept pushing him away.

“Tess, love, there wasn't anyone else. Not after the first time we were together. I swear—”

I gave him a final, violent shove that caught him off guard and nearly knocked him off the couch. I got up. It was over. Our one chance and he had just blown it.

He caught himself and was on his feet immediately, trying again to take me in his arms.

Did you ever have one of those dreams where you are so angry all you can do is cry? Where you want to punch the hell out of someone, but all you can do is flail away weakly at them? Well, it was like that. I was so angry, but even the combined force of the old, tired anger of being cheated on and the new burning anger at his coming here, giving me hope, only to lie to me again was no match for the pain. I was so flattened by that pain, I couldn’t fight. All I could do was cry and keep pushing his hands away. He finally he had me by the arms and pulled me to him. I dug my elbows into his chest, refusing to be held.

“Tess, this is crazy. Who told you I had someone else? Why would you believe that?”

Anger finally broke through the ragged, rasping sobs and I screamed at him, “No one told me, you lying bastard! You son of a bitch!” The shock on his face was so rewarding I wanted to go on screaming, I wanted to call him every filthy name I knew, but I couldn't. All I could do is choke out one last thing. “I saw you with her!”

I couldn't see his reaction through the tears but I felt it. He froze. He was still holding on to me but now I was able to squirm loose, and shove him away. I spun around and walked stiffly to my room.

One picture is worth a thousand words. I went to the closet and pulled the chain to turn on the overhead closet light. The box was on the top shelf, and it was heavy. I wrestled it down, crying the whole time. Kneeling on the hard floor, I pried the flaps open. The magazine I needed was right on top. It took a little bit to find the right page because I couldn't see through the tears. When I found it, I wiped my face on the sleeve of my expensive new dress, sniffed hard, and stared at the smiling faces in front of me. “OK, deny this, you bastard,” I thought as I shoved the box out of the way. I looked up and he was standing next to the bed watching me.

“You want to know why I left?” I asked, coldly in control again. “Here. I was there when this was taken.” I held the magazine up and he walked around the foot of the bed. As he took it from me I said, “The caption is wrong, though. It should say “Paul's Live-in Lover.” He stared at the photo and his usually unreadable expression was easy to read. Shocked but finally understanding.

He turned away from me and walked over to the dresser, putting his hands on it and leaning from the waist like a boxer who had just taken a solid hit to the gut. Well, I was winding up with the knockout punch. Timing is everything in the ring so I waited until he straightened up and turned around to look at me. As he opened his mouth for the apology that was too late, I hit him with it.

“I left because I wasn't about to hang around and be the new Francie Schwartz!”

Whatever he had been going to say was gone. He stood there, looking at me with no words left. The shock and dismay that seeing the picture had brought to his face disappeared. His face froze, jaw clenched in a look that conveyed both rage and humiliation. When he finally moved, it was to fling the magazine across the room. It hit the wall with a smack, and he was out of the room before it hit the floor. The “Winner And Still Champion” got up, staggered to the bed and curled up on the foot of it crying.

I didn't hear him come back into the room. He was suddenly there, patting my back making soothing sounds. “Easy, sweetheart. There, there Honey. I can explain—”

”Just leave!” I choked out. My voice was hoarse from crying. I turned away and buried my face in the bed spread. I couldn't stand to look at him. “Call a cab. Go to a hotel.”

He ignored me. “Tess,” he said, “I have done a few things in my life that I am not especially proud of, but Francie… God. That was so… stupid. Jane and I had problems but that… that's the one thing I never wanted you to find out about me.” As he talked the regret and miserable humiliation in his voice pulled at me. It was impossible not to feel something, and I sniveled down to silence to listen to him.

“I was such a bastard, I actually thought I had the right... that Jane was...” He groaned. “Fuck,” he muttered. “Knowing all that ...that horrible stuff, I guess it's no wonder you believed I was cheating on you, but I wasn't.”

The words hung in the air between us. Why was he still saying that? I couldn't take any more of this. I didn't want to fight anymore. “Get out. Leave. Now,” I pleaded, sounding as exhausted as I felt.

“No!” he aid firmly, stubbornly. “Listen to—”

“No!” I yelled, rolling away from him and sitting up. “Get out of here. I am not going to listen to any more lies!”

“Tess, baby, please—”

He was reaching for me and I jerked away and scrambled to get off the bed. If he wouldn't leave, I would have to. I didn't know where I thought I would go, I just knew I couldn't stand being near him, but when I tried to get up, he grabbed my wrist.

“Let go!” I yelled. “I am not going to listen to you! I have heard enough lies! Just get out of here, out of my life!”

“Tess, I never lied to you!”

“No you never said 'I'm not seeing anyone else, I'm not living with anyone else' did you?” I was on my feet, struggling to get away from him and I was yelling, almost screaming at him. “But you sure as hell let me believe that! That's a lie—just like the lie about going to Liverpool!”

“I wasn't seeing anyone and I did go—,” he yelled back.

“Let go of me!”

“Listen to me!” He was on his feet now, trying to pull me back to him.

“No! Get out of here!”

“Dammit, Tess, listen to me!” he roared. The sound absolutely echoed in the small room and I cringed.

He saw that and let go abruptly. “Oh, Christ. Baby, I'm sorry,” he said and he sounded awful.

I was worn out, too exhausted to fight. I sat back down on the bed, drained, empty inside. Again. Tears rolled down my face, burning like battery acid. I didn't want to hear, didn't want to listen, didn't want to go on with this any longer. I wanted to just lie down on the bed and finish dying inside.

He sat down next to me, not touching me, not trying to hold me. “I came expecting to hear that you had second thoughts about me,” he said, “or about getting involved in the kind of life I have. Thinking, hoping it would be something that we could work out. But that picture… Christ, Tess, I can't believe this.”

He laughed and it was a shaky miserable laugh. “It was a mistake, love. I almost wish it were true. That would be better than knowing I almost lost you for no reason. Tess, we put each other through hell for no reason at all! It was a fuckin', bloody, stupid mistake!”

I sat there, eyes closed to shut out the light, to shut out Paul, but with my eyes closed I heard what I hadn't heard before. I guess I had been so convinced I was going to hear apologies that, when they didn't come, I couldn't hear anything else, but now, having given up, I could hear what he was saying, really hear him. I could hear the pain and regret in his words. More than that, I could hear the solid, unshakable sound of the truth. In that moment I knew he had been telling the truth all along. I still didn't understand, but I believed.

I opened my heart and raised my eyes to really look at him. All I saw on his face was love and pain. I looked into his eyes and saw tears. He looked at me and knew I was finally listening.

“Oh, God. Tess, please, love. If you won't let me hold you, then hold me,” he asked and his voice was breaking.

I reached out for him and pulled him to me, wrapping him in my arms, feeling his tears on my face and in my heart. I took a ragged breath. It felt like the first breath I had taken since he stepped off the plane. As the tight pain in my chest melted, he told me the truth, the simple, stupid truth.

“The girl in the picture is Angela. The one that's engaged to my brother. She works for a Liverpool company that specializes in restoration of old buildings.”

“Oh God. The Royal Theatre.” It was my turn to groan and whisper “Fuck!”

He nodded. “When she came back and forth to London she stayed with me. She was there on and off for months. When I got to Liverpool that weekend, Mike was down with the flu. Sick as a dog. He was supposed to take her to the grand opening. He couldn't, so I did.”

I cried then. Dry, aching sobs of regret as I said I was sorry, so sorry.

“No, Tess, don't,” he said but he was crying too. We just held each other.

“I should have called you when we got back to London, but it was getting late. I had to get a tux… and knew you weren't expecting me until the next day so I let it go.”

I gave in to the comfort of his arms and just held onto him. He made a little groaning sound and swore softly, not in anger but in frustration. “Bloody fuckin' hell,” he said. “If you hadn't known about Francie you would have never thought…”

“I don't know… It was so many little things,” I said, throat raw, voice hiccuping. I reached for the Kleenex box on the dresser and began mopping up. “I saw her clothes at your house, her makeup in your bathroom—”

“The only other bath in the house has never been fixed up! It's a tiny awful thing on the third floor!”

I sniffled miserably.

He sighed and scooted me around, pulling me onto his lap. “Lord, Tess, why didn't you say something?”

“I… I didn't think it was any of my business at first, and once we were in Scotland… by then I thought she was just another girl. I thought you were through with her.”

“And then you saw us together.”

“Yes.” I was starting to cry again, a total emotional wreck.

“Ah, honey. I can't believe this happened. Clothes in the bath. Oh, hell.” He was holding me, rocking me gently, kissing away the tears.

“It wasn't just that,” I squeaked out between hiccuping sobs. “After I saw you with her I thought about the times you were supposed to be at meetings, the way you always left me at night, and…”

“Me reputation?” There was a little laugh in his voice and the Liverpudlian amusement.

“Yeah. That too.” I wasn't ready to see the humor in the situation. There was something else, a shadow that drifted in the back of my heart. “When you were with Jane… Francie wasn't the only one, was she?”

“Oh shit,” he said. He let go of me slowly, holding me loosely to look me in the eyes. “No,” was his eventual quiet answer.

I looked back at him, absorbing that, seeing how it felt to know it, not just suspect. It didn't feel any different. It didn't change anything because I had already made up my mind.

“It doesn't matter,” I said softly as I reached up to touch his face. “I want to be with you. I need you in my life.”

His answer was to kiss me. Ignoring my tear soaked, mascara smeared face and drippy nose, he found my mouth with his, tipped my head back and kissed me hard and… Well, how do you describe a kiss that just goes right to your heart, finds every longing, fills every need and promises more?

When it was done, he wanted a promise from me. “No matter what happens from now on, promise me you will talk to me, try to work it out.” he said.

“I promise.”

I had expected apologies and promises tonight, I just hadn't imagined I would be the one making them.

He slid me off his lap and onto the bed and eased me down to lie in his arms. I let him, with only a vague, uncaring thought that my roommates would come home and find him in my room, not on the couch. That thought troubled me not in the least and would have passed on, ignored, but it caught a tripwire to another thought and blew it sky high. The thought of John and I on that couch. A wave of fear hit me and left me feeling sick to my stomach. I had to say something. He didn't seem to know, and if he found out later…

I sat up. “There is one other thing we have to talk about.” I sounded as sick and scared as I felt. Paul looked up at me and rolled onto his back and waited for me to go on. I couldn't. The words simply wouldn't come. I had never regretted my time with John for moral or social or religious reasons but right then I would have given anything to undo it.

“What is it, love?” he asked and there was a knowing tension in his voice. He knew this was going to be bad. I reached out and put a hand on his chest, needing to soften the words with physical contact or maybe hoping to hold him there, keep him from getting up and walking away.

“I didn't leave England with John,” I said barely able to form the words, “but later… I… we…” The words stuck in my throat and I struggled to make myself say the rest, but Paul interrupted.

“I know,” he said flatly as though purposely hiding his feelings. “John told me.”

Relief flooded through me. I didn't have to say the awful words and, better yet, he had come after me knowing I had slept with his best friend, partner, rival. There was a hard lump in my throat and no words left to say except, again, “I'm sorry,” in a voice so small and miserable it seemed as inadequate as the words themselves.

He reached up and put his hand on the back of my neck and drew me back down against him. “He called me last week.” His voice was soft and sad now. “He said there was something I needed to know before I talked to you and if I couldn't handle it, I should just leave you alone.”

I suppose I didn't really owe him the apology—I hadn't done it to hurt him— and no explanation either, but I felt the need to explain. “Paul, I—”

He cut me off. “Leave off. Just leave it go. I hate the idea of you being with him and I don't want to hear about it!” The anger was there but buried by anguish in his next words. “I don't care. I just want you back, girl. I just want you back.”

When he kissed me this time it was hard and demanding and I let him hurt me with his kisses and move on top of me. I knew he was going to make love to me—no, not make love, just have my body. It would be with the wrong feeling and for the wrong reason, in jealous anger to claim me back from John. I didn't care. It was what I wanted too. I couldn't help but think of how I had been that first time with John. This was, in its way, another sexorcism. John and I could have shared a laugh at that but Paul wouldn't find it funny at all.

Paul's anger was less than his desire. His kisses grew softer and his touch gentle. “I want you,” he said.

“I never stopped wanting you,” I told him.

I kissed him back, touching his face, running my fingers through his hair, over his arms, his back, holding tightly. His mouth was soft and the kisses so sweet, so forgiving. He was so warm and the weight of his body felt so right. Everywhere we touched I felt my body react to him, lifting to meet him. I arched my back to fit myself to him, to feel his hardness press against me, against the melting softness that wanted him in me. We were still fully dressed, layers of clothing separating us, but it was nearly over for me just from the feel of him. I groaned and he eased away, stroking me through my clothes. I shuddered with the touch and grabbed his hand, holding it away. I didn't want it to happen so soon. He settled down beside me, kissing me, touching my face.

I tried to tell him how much I had missed him, of the long nights and aching dreams. He said he had never hurt so bad, he thought he would go crazy at first. These were fragments of thoughts whispered between kisses that wouldn't wait. We both needed to talk about the hurt of the past months, explain so many things, but right now we needed to make love. When he pulled my dress away and touched my breast, I started to tremble and so did he. He slid down and pressed his mouth against it. His tongue circled my nipple and that alone was nearly enough.

One last frantic effort to get out of our clothes without interrupting and we were finally feeling the rush of total sensation everywhere we touched. The bedroom was cold but his body was so warm, his hands heating wherever they touched, his mouth so hot. I didn't want to stop to get under the covers but I was shivering. Paul rolled us to the edge of the bed, reached out and tugged the blankets down. With only a momentary interruption in the total body contact that was so intoxicating, we scrambled under the blankets. In no time we were warm all over, breathing in gasps and still unable to get enough of touching each other. I took him in my hand, almost afraid to stroke him because he was so hard, so ready. He slid his hand down between my legs and I felt the rush of sensation that meant I was right at the edge. Neither of us was going to last much longer. I pulled him on top of me and he started to say “I can't—” but I stopped him with a frantic kiss. I knew he was going to say he couldn't hold back if he was in me and I didn't care. I was ready and I wanted him in me, to feel that closeness, that incredible closeness. I didn't care if I came, I just wanted him.

“Now,” I said and he pushed inside of me, and whispered “Are you still mine?”

“Yes. Oh, yes!” I said. He started to move, watching my face, watching as I lost control and moved with him, feeling the waves spreading though me, crying out his name over and over.

As I came, he groaned and thrust hard, again and again. The head of the bed banged against the wall and he gasped, “Oh, Tess, Yeah, Yeah!” and exploded in me. He shuddered and collapsed on me, still thrusting in groaning spasms.

When he could finally talk, he said “Don't leave me again, love, please don't ever leave.” The desperation in his voice and dampness on his cheeks revealed as much about how I had hurt him than anything else had all through the long and painful evening. I held him and told him over and over I loved him, I would never leave him, and I was sorry, so very sorry for the way I had hurt him.

“No,” he murmured. “It wasn't your fault.” He touched my face, wiping away

our mingled tears, stroking my hair, soothing me. “I should have known something was wrong. I knew you loved me.”

Slowly, whispering our love, our apologies, our promises, over and over, we eased back down from the frightening intensity of the moment to happiness, pure happiness. Love and confidence in that love seemed to fill every touch and kiss. Neither of us moved until finally he slipped out of me and I felt the warm rush of fluid. He rolled off of me and I turned on my side to face him and we went on kissing and stroking each other, satisfied but unwilling to let the feeling go.

Finally, we lay together, too happy to be worn out, to satisfied to begin again. I climbed on top of him and said, “You get that side of the bed.”

He chuckled, remembering the nights in Scotland when we argued about who had to sleep on the wet spot. “Does that mean I can stay here all night?”

“You aren't going to spend it anywhere else,” I informed him.

“What about your roommates?”

“The bed is too small. You will have to settle for just me.”

Laughing, he started kissing me again. “You are all I can handle anyway.”

“I just hope they can handle us sleeping together.”

“They don't know what happened in England?”

“They knew I fell in love and got hurt, and when you showed up today, they knew who the mystery man was. But no, I never told them for certain that we were sleeping together.”

“Or why you left?”

“They asked. I told them that I fell for you like a ton of bricks and that I thought you loved me too, but…”

“But I was screwing around.”

“No! I didn't tell them that. I just said that you didn't seem to want the same things I want, that we didn't have the same ideas of what being in love is all about.”

“You told them my intentions were not honorable?” he asked with mock horror.

“Yeah, something like that.”

“They are,” he said, suddenly serious, looking into my eyes. “You know what I want—professionally and personally,” he quoted.

All I started out hoping for was two weeks in his arms. Even during those few, happy days when we were making plans to be together, he never talked about anything beyond the time when I would finish school and come back to him. This time he was talking about something more, something like five years from now.

“I know,” I said softly, “I read it in a fan magazine.”

“I remember that interview,” he said, laughing softly. “The interviewer propositioned me after. Said she only wanted me body for a couple of weeks.”

“She thought that was all she dared hope for.”

“She ended up with my heart.” There was no answer for that except to kiss him. There were still unanswered questions and so much that needed to be said, but first I needed to make love to him again and so I did.