wrong?” Diane asked placidly, looking around at the busy airport shops with interest. Her eyes were a vivid, excited emerald today, full of anticipation of the adventure ahead. She seemed totally unaware of his torment.
“No. Nothing,” he grumbled. He wistfully eyed a crowded bar to their right called Port of Call. A double scotch would take the edge off. But he was driving and couldn’t indulge himself.
“It’s too bad the flights couldn’t have been closer together,” she mused, stopping to finger a pretty Irish wool shawl at an import shop. “We might have been able to leave directly after putting the children on their plane instead of having to drive back to Nanticoke.”
“I had thought about that,” he admitted. “But there was a delay in completing the maintenance check, then new flight plans had to be filed. Your passport won’t be delivered until later this afternoon. Seven hours’ wait in an airport would be a bore.” On the other hand, even an hour alone with Diane at the little Cape Cod wasn’t likely to be relaxing. He felt wound tighter than Big Ben’s spring.
“I suppose.” She sighed. “It’s just as well. I still have some cleaning to do before I can lock up the house for the summer.” She fell silent for the remainder of the hike to the short-term parking garage.
He wished he knew what she was thinking. Could she possibly guess how alert his body was to every move she made? The subtle sway of her full hips was enough to send sweat trickling down his spine under his clean white dress shirt. The purposeful tilt of her chin made his heart hammer. She seemed driven by a fresh supply of energy today—and he could think of dozens of ways to help her expend it.
Until now the children’s presence and obstreperous enthusiasm for the trip had made it impossible for any real sense of intimacy to develop between them. Diane had been busy with laundry and packing, and he’d needed to verify the children’s travel arrangements, then secure a car and driver to whisk the foursome directly from the arrival gate in Orlando to the grandparents’ home.
The night before they were all to leave, ten o’clock had rolled around before Diane had been able to get all three children settled in their beds. This admittedly had been an awkward time for him. Thomas had felt a restlessness growing inside as he’d contemplated their being alone at last. He hadn’t realized how much he’d longed for a chance to have Diane to himself.
But before he’d been able to decide how best to handle the situation, Diane had announced she was “totally done in” and would be calling it a night. She’d handed Thomas a pillow and blanket, then nodded toward the couch. Disappointed, he’d stretched out on the lumpy cushions. Minutes passed. He’d thought about Diane lying in her bed in the other room. Tried to ignore the insistent cravings of his body. It had seemed impossible to find a comfortable position for his long body on the too-short sofa. He’d listened to the softly seductive sounds of Diane turning restlessly between her sheets, to her sighs as she drifted off to sleep…to his own heart racing in his chest. He hadn’t slept at all.
But now an empty house awaited them. Thomas didn’t know how he was going to keep his hands off Diane. If he’d been a religious man, he’d have prayed all the way from Long Island to Nanticoke. Instead, he concentrated on driving.
The traffic on I-95 was relatively heavy for a Sunday morning. He expected that was due to the season. During the summer, vacationers would be on the road and locals on their way to the beaches. Whatever the reason, he felt deeply grateful for the distraction the weaving cars and speeding RVs provided. He didn’t have time to dwell on the hunger building inside his body.
As soon as he pulled the sedan into her driveway, before his hands even left the steering wheel, Diane threw open the passenger door and bounded toward the house like an Olympic sprinter. He followed her inside, wondering why she was in such a rush. When he walked through the kitchen door, she was already on the telephone, speaking in regretful tones to the only child’s mother she hadn’t been able to reach the day before.
Thomas pressed the heels of his hands down on the back of a kitchen chair and waited until she finished giving the woman the name of two other day-care providers in town and hung up. “Was she giving you a hard time about leaving for the summer?”
Diane jumped as if she hadn’t realized he was in the room. “Oh…not really. It’s unsettling for a parent to have to alter child-care arrangements on short notice. The problem is, she may be so happy with one of the women I’ve recommended, I might not get her back in the fall.”
“Perhaps you’ll decide to choose another kind of job by the time you return.”
“I know. I’ve been thinking a lot about alternatives.”
Thomas couldn’t seem to drag his eyes away from that expressive mouth of hers as she bubbled on about careers she’d once dreamed of having—a translator for the U.N., liaison for a diplomatic mission, member of a negotiating team on assignment in a foreign country. He didn’t for a moment doubt she’d be good at any of them. But since she’d never had a job outside of her home, he feared she would need some time to work herself up the governmental ladder. Her lips twitched with emotion when she spoke, settled into a firm line of determination, pouted, trembled subtly, then lifted on a strand of hope. They were constantly moving. He longed to press his mouth over them, quiet them. Force them to respond to his own lips.
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