are we going?” Nikki asked.
“No place in particular,” he said. He glanced at her with faint amusement. “Unless,” he added, “you like to fish.”
“I don’t mind it. But you hate it!” she laughed.
“Of course I do. But I have to keep my hand in,” he added. “So that I don’t disgrace the rest of my family. The gear and tackle are under that tarp. I thought we’d ease up the river a bit and settle in a likely spot. I brought an ice chest and lunch.”
“You really are full of surprises,” she commented.
His dark eyes twinkled. “You don’t know the half of it,” he murmured, turning his concentration back to navigation.
He found a leafy glade and tied the boat up next to shore. He and Nikki sat lazily on the bank and watched their corks rise and fall and occasionally bob. They ate cold cut sandwiches and potato chips and sipped soft drinks, and Nikki marveled at the tycoon who was a great fishing companion. Not since her childhood, when she’d gone fishing with her late grandfather, had she enjoyed anything so much. She’d forgotten how much fun it was to sit on the river with a fishing pole.
“Do you do this often?” she wanted to know.
“With my brothers and my father. Not ever with a woman.” His broad shoulders lifted and fell. “Most of them that I know don’t care for worms and hooks,” he mused. “You’re not squeamish, are you?”
“Not really. About some things, maybe,” she added quietly. “But unless you’re shooting the fish in a barrel, they have a sporting chance. And I do love fried bass!”
“Can you clean a fish?”
“You bet!”
He chuckled with delight. “In that case, if we catch anything, I’m inviting myself to supper.” His eyes narrowed. “If you have no other plans.”
“Not for two weeks, I haven’t,” she said.
He seemed to relax. His powerful legs stretched out in front of him and he tugged on the fishing pole to test the hook. “Nothing’s striking at my bait,” he grumbled. “I haven’t had a bite yet. We’ll give it ten more minutes and then we’re moving to a better spot.”
“The minute we move, a hundred big fish will feel safe to vacation here,” she pointed out.
“You’re probably right. Some days aren’t good ones to fish.”
“That depends on what you’re fishing for,” she said, concentrating on the sudden bob of her cork. “Watch this…!”
She pulled suddenly on the pole, snaring something at the end of the line, and scrambled to her feet. Whatever she’d hooked was giving her a run for her money. She pulled and released, pulled and released, worked the pole, moved up the bank, muttered and clicked her tongue until finally her prey began to tire. She watched Kane watching her and laughed at his dismal expression.
“You’re hoping I’ll drop him, aren’t you?” she challenged. “Well, I won’t. Supper, here you come!”
She gave a hard jerk on the line and the fish, a large bass, flipped up onto the bank. While Kane dealt with it, she baited her hook again. “I’ve got mine,” she told him. “I don’t know what you’ll eat, of course.”
He sat down beside her and picked up his own pole. “We’ll just see about that,” he returned.
Two hours later, they had three large bass. Nikki had caught two of them. Kane lifted the garbage and then the cooler with the fish into the boat. Nikki forgave herself for feeling vaguely superior, just for a few minutes.
Kane had forgotten his tragedies, his business dealings, his worries in the carefree morning he was sharing with Nikki. Her company had liberated his one-track mind from the rigors that plagued men of his echelon. He was used to being by himself, to letting business occupy every waking hour. Since the death of his family, he’d substituted making money for everything else. Food tasted like cardboard to him. Sleep was infrequent and an irritating necessity. He hadn’t taken a vacation or even a day off since the trip he’d taken with his wife and son that had ended so tragically.
Perhaps that very weariness had made him careless and caused his head injury. But looking at Nikki, so relaxed and happy beside him, he couldn’t be sorry about it. She was an experience he knew he’d never forget. But, like all the others, he’d taste her delights and put her aside. And in two weeks after he left her, he wouldn’t be able to recall her name. The thought made him restless.
Nikki noticed his unease. She wondered if he was as attracted to her emotionally as he seemed to be physically. It had worried her when he’d admitted that he had a lover. Of course, he thought she did, too, and it couldn’t have been further from the truth. But it could be, she was forced to admit, remembering the feel of his big arms around her. He could be her lover. She trembled inside at the size and power of his body. Mosby had never been able to bring himself to make love to her at all. He’d only been able to touch her lightly and without passion. She hadn’t known what it was to be kissed breathless, to be a slave to her body’s needs, until this stranger had come along. There were many reasons that would keep her from becoming intimate with him. And the first was the faceless lover who clung to him in the darkness. She didn’t know how to compete with another woman, because she’d never had to.
She forced her wandering mind back to the fishing. This had been one of the most carefree days of her life. She was sad to see it end. Kane had agreed to come to supper, but she was losing him now to other concerns. His mind wasn’t on the fish, or her. She wondered what errant thought had made him so preoccupied.
“I have to make a telephone call, or I’d help you clean the fish,” he said when he left her at the front door of her beach house with the cooler.
“Business?” she asked.
His face showed nothing. “You might call it that.” He didn’t say anything else. He smiled at her distractedly and left with a careless wave of his hand.
Nikki went in to clean the fish, disturbed by his sudden remoteness. What kind of business could he have meant?
Kane listened patiently while the angry voice at the other end of the telephone ranted and railed at him.
“You promised that we could go to the Waltons’ party tonight!” Chris fumed. “How can you do this to me? What sort of deal are you working on that demands a whole evening of your time?”
“That’s hardly your concern,” he said in a very quiet voice. Her rudeness and lack of compassion were beginning to irritate him. She was a competent psychologist, and he couldn’t fault her intellect. But their mutual need for safe intimacy had been their only common bond. Chris wanted a man she could lead around by the nose in any emotional relationship. Kane wasn’t the type to let anyone, man or woman, dictate to him. He’d tired of Chris. Tonight, she was an absolute nuisance.
“When will you phone me, then?” she asked stiffly.
“When I have time. It might be as well if we don’t see as much of each other in the future.”
There
