“That shouldn’t have happened. Sorry, but I’ve been thinking about it since the night you stripped in front of me. I remember exactly what you look like naked, and things got out of control and-” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “It wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t started crying.”
Her brows lowered as she stared into the darkened shadows and raised her fingers to her lips, still moist from his kiss. She wished he hadn’t apologized. She knew she should probably be mad or appalled or offended by the way they’d both behaved, but she wasn’t. At the moment, she didn’t feel offended, appalled, or even sorry. She just felt alive. “You’re blaming me? I’m not the one who grabbed and assaulted your mouth.”
“Assaulted? I didn’t assault you.” He pointed at her. “I can’t stand to see a woman cry. I know it sounds clichéd, but it’s true. I would have done just about anything to get you to stop.”
She was sure she’d be sorry later, though. Like when she had to see him in the light of day. “You could have walked away.”
“And you’d still be bawling your eyes out like you were the night at the Double Tree.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Once again, I did you a favor.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Not at all. You stopped crying, didn’t you?”
“Is this your ulterior motive crap again? You kissed me to help me out?”
“It’s not crap.”
“Wow, how noble of you.” She laughed. “I suppose you got turned on because…why?”
“Clare,” he said through a sigh, “you’re an attractive woman and I’m a man. Of course you turn me on. I don’t have to stand here and try to imagine what you look like naked, I know you’re beautiful all over. So of course I felt something. If I hadn’t felt some measure of desire, I’d be damn worried about myself.”
She didn’t bother pointing out that his desire measured about eight hard inches. She wished she could conjure up some righteous indignation or anger, but she couldn’t. To do that meant she’d have to be sorry. Right now, she wasn’t. With one kiss he’d given her back something she hadn’t even known she’d let slip away. Her power to make a man want her with nothing more than a kiss.
“You should thank me,” he said.
Right. She probably should thank him, but not for the reason he thought. “And you should go right ahead and kiss my butt.” Lord, she sounded like she was ten again, but she didn’t feel like it. Thanks to the man in front of her.
He chuckled, low and deep in his chest.
“In case you’re confused, Sebastian, that wasn’t an invitation.”
“It sure sounded like an invitation,” he said. He took a few steps back and added, “The next time I’m in town, I just might take you up on it.”
“I don’t know. Will I have to thank you?”
“No. You won’t have to, but you will.” Then, without another word, he turned and walked away, not in the direction of the party but toward the carriage house.
She’d known Sebastian all of her life. Some things hadn’t changed. Like his attempts to talk around her and make her think day was night, to feed her lines of bull, and on occasion make her feel wonderful. Like the time he’d told her that her eyes were the color of the irises growing in her mother’s garden. She couldn’t remember her age, but she did remember that she’d lived on the compliment for days.
Clare felt the sharp edges of the tree against her back as she watched Sebastian step onto the porch of the carriage house. The light above his head turned his hair gold and the white of his shirt almost neon. He opened the red door and disappeared inside.
She once again raised her fingers to lips made sensitive by his kiss. She’d known him most of her life, but one thing was for certain, Sebastian was no longer a boy. He was definitely a man. A man who made women like Lorna Devers eye him like a piece of smooth, mouth-watering decadence. Like something she wanted to sink her teeth into just once.
Clare knew the feeling.
Ten
The second week of September, Sebastian boarded an international flight bound for Calcutta, India. Seven-thousand-plus miles and twenty-four hours later, he boarded a smaller aircraft for the plains of Bihar, India, where life and death depended on the whim of the annual monsoon and the ability to find a few hundred dollars to battle kala azar-black fever.
He landed in Muzaffarpur and drove four hours to the village of Rajwara with a local doctor and a photographer. From a distance the village looked bucolic and untouched by modern civilization. Men in traditional white dhoti kurta cultivated the fields with wooden carts and water buffalo, but like all underdeveloped parts of the globe that he’d reported on in the past, Sebastian knew this peaceful scene was an illusion.
As he and the other two men walked the dirt lanes of Rajwara, swarms of excited children surrounded them, kicking up dust along the way. A Seattle Mariners baseball cap shaded his face from the sun, and he’d filled the pockets of his cargo pants with extra batteries for his tape recorder. The doctor was well known in the village, and women in bright saris emerged from thatched huts one after the other, speaking rapidly in Hindi. Sebastian didn’t need the doctor to translate to know what was said. The sound of the poor begging for help spoke a universal language.
Over the years, Sebastian had learned to place a professional wall between himself and what took place around him. To report on it without sinking into a black fog of hopeless depression. But scenes like these were still hard to encounter.
He stayed on the Bihar plains for three days interviewing One World Health and Doctors Without Borders relief workers. He visited hospitals. He spoke with a pharmaceutical chemist in the U.S. who’d developed a stronger more effective antibiotic, but like all drug development, money was the key to its success. He visited one last clinic and walked between the crammed rows of beds before he headed back to Calcutta.
He had an early flight out in the morning and was more than ready to relax in the hotel lounge, away from the teeming city, the overwhelming smells, and the constant noisy barrage. India possessed some of the most astounding beauty on earth and some of the most appalling poverty. In some places the two lived side by side, and nowhere was that more in evidence than Calcutta.
There had been a time when he’d scorned the journalist he considered soft-those “old” guys who kicked back in nice comfy hotel bars and ordered hotel food. As a young journalist, he’d felt that the best stories were out there in the streets, in the trenches and on the battlefields, in the flea bag hotels and slums, waiting to be told. He’d been right, but they weren’t the only worthy stories or always the most important. He used to believe he needed to feel bullets whizzing past his head, but he’d learned that high-octane reporting could make a journalist lose perspective. The rush to report could lead to a loss of objectivity. Some of the best reporting came from a thorough and unbiased gaze. Through the years, he’d perfected the sometimes difficult craft of journalistic balance.
At thirty-five, Sebastian had suffered through several cases of dysentery, been robbed, stepped in running streams of raw sewage, and seen enough death to last him a lifetime. He’d been there and done that, and earned every bit of his success. He didn’t have to fight for a byline anymore. After years of running full tilt, balls to the walls, chasing stories and leads, he’d earned some kickback time in an air-conditioned hotel.
He ordered a Cobra beer and tandoori chicken while he checked his e-mail. Halfway through his meal, an old colleague spotted him.
“Sebastian Vaughan.”
Sebastian looked up and a smile spread across his mouth as he recognized the man walking toward him. Ben Landis was shorter than Sebastian, with thick black hair and an open, friendly face. The last time Sebastian had seen him, Ben had been a correspondent with USA Today, and they’d both been in a Kuwaiti hotel, awaiting the invasion of Iraq. Sebastian stood and shook Ben’s hand. “What are you up to?” he asked.