So she put on her just-good-friends face and watched him stalk the room.
But as she watched him, she felt a flame inside glowing, trying to grow and warm her, trying to ignite her need to touch him and be touched by him. She smothered it.
She was not going to get burned again.
Alan watched Sylvia out of the corner of his eye as he pretended to scan the titles on the library shelves. He barely saw the books. Like the song: He only had eyes for her.
Jeez, she was beautiful sitting there in her burgundy robe with her hair down and falling about her face. He had always felt attracted to her, but now… fate seemed to have thrown them together. She was sitting on the sofa over there with her robe demurely tucked around her, but he had caught sight of a length of long white thigh before she had arranged herself, and it was as if one of those lightning bolts arcing across the sky outside had struck him in the groin.
This was crazy! His life had completely fallen apart—he didn't even have a home anymore, for Chrissake!—and all he could think about was the woman across the room from him.
Yet where was all her banter, where were her come-ons when he needed them? He didn't know how to handle this, what to do, what to say.
Hi! You live around here? Come here often? What's your sign?
He took a gulp of the brandy and felt the fumes sear his nasopharynx.
But at last he could admit to himself that he wanted Sylvia, had wanted her for a long time. And now they were here, alone, with all the walls broken down. But instead of playing Mae West, she was suddenly Mary Tyler Moore.
He couldn't let the moment pass. He wanted her too much, needed her too much, especially now. Especially tonight. He needed someone to stand up with him, and he wanted Sylvia to be that someone. She had the strength to do it. He could go it alone, but it would be so much better with her beside him.
He wandered along the wall, gazing at the spines of the books, not seeing their titles. Then he came around behind the couch where she was sitting and stood directly behind her. She didn't turn around to look at him. She said nothing. Merely sat there like an expectant statue. He reached out toward her hair and hesitated.
What if she turns me away? What if I've read her wrong all these years?
He forced his hand forward to touch her hair, laying his fingers and open palm gently against the silky strands and stroking downward from where they fell from the center part. The tickling sensation in his palm sent a pleasurable chill up his arm. He knew Sylvia felt it too, for he could see the gooseflesh rising on the skin of her forearm where it protruded from the sleeve of her robe.
"Sylvia—"
She suddenly jumped up and spun around. "Need a refill?" She took his glass. "Me too."
He followed her over to the bar and stood at her side, desperately searching for something to say as she poured more brandy into the snifters. Alan noticed her hand trembling. Suddenly there was a deafening crash of thunder and the lights went out. He heard Sylvia wail, heard the brandy bottle drop, and then she was in his arms, clutching him in fear, trembling against him.
He put his arms around her. God, she was quaking! This wasn't an act. Sylvia was genuinely frightened.
"Hey, it's all right," he said soothingly. "Just a near miss. The lights will go on soon."
She said nothing, but soon the tremors stopped.
"I hate thunderstorms," she said.
"I love them!" he said and held her tighter. "Especially now. Because I was racking my brain for a way to get my arms around you."
She looked up at him. Although he could not see her expression in the darkness, he felt a change come over her.
"Stop it!" she said. Her voice was strained.
"Stop what?" She was still against him, but it was as if she had just pulled herself a step or two away.
"Just stop it!"
"Sylvia, I don't know what—"
"You know and don't pretend you don't!"
She slammed her right fist against his chest, then her left, then she was pounding at him with both at once.
"You're not going to do this to me! It's not going to happen again! I won't let it! I won't! I won't!"
Alan pulled her tightly against him, as much to comfort the pain he sensed within her as to protect himself.
"Sylvia! What's wrong?"
She struggled fiercely for a moment, then slumped against him. He heard and felt her sobs.
"Don't do this to me!" she cried.
"Do what?" He was baffled and shaken by her outburst.
"Don't make me need you and depend on you to be there. I can't go through that again. I can't lose one more person, I just can't!"
And then he understood. He tightened his arms around her.
"I'm not going anywhere."
"That's what Greg thought."
"Nobody can guarantee against that kind of tragedy."
"Maybe not. But sometimes it seems like you're courting disaster."
"I think I learned a big lesson tonight."
"I hope so. You could have been killed."
"But I wasn't. I'm here. I want to be with you, Sylvia. And if you let me, I will be with you—tonight and every night. But especially tonight."
After a long pause he felt her arms wriggle out from between them and slip around his back. "Especially tonight?" she said in a small voice.
"Yeah. It's been a long time coming and I don't think I can turn back now."
He waited patiently through another long pause. Finally she lifted her face to him.
"Me neither."
He kissed her then and she responded, bringing her hands up to his face and then clasping her fingers behind his neck.
Alan pressed her against him, nearly overwhelmed by the feelings growing within him, old feelings that had lain dormant so long he had almost forgotten they existed. He opened the front of her robe and she parted his, and then her skin was hot against the length of him. Soon the robes had fallen to the floor and he led her to the couch, where he explored every inch of her with his fingers and his lips as she explored him. Then they were together, straining against each other, strobe-lit by lightning, the thunder and pounding rain all but drowning out the sounds they made as they peaked with the storm.
"God! Is that what it's like?" she heard him say after they had caught their breaths and lay together on the couch.
"You mean it's been so long you've forgotten?" Sylvia asked with a laugh.
She could almost see him smile in the dark.
"Yeah. Seems like forever since it's been like this. I've been going through the motions so long I've forgotten what passion feels like. I mean real passion. It's great! It's like being cleansed. Like being run through a wringer and hung up to dry."
The lights remained out. Lightning still flickered, but not as brightly, and there were increasingly longer intervals between the flashes and the rumbles.
Alan pulled away and went to the window. He seemed to love the storm.
"Do you know that you're the second woman I've ever made love to?"
Sylvia was startled. "Ever?"
"Ever."
"You must have had plenty of opportunities."
"I guess so. Lots of offers, anyway. I don't know how many were serious." She saw the silhouette of his head turn her way. "Only one offerer ever attracted me."
"But you never took her up on them."
"Not because she didn't appeal to me."
"But because you were married."
"Yeah. The Faithful Husband. Who committed adultery every day."
That puzzled her. "I don't get you."
"My paramour was my practice," he said in a low voice, as if talking to himself. "She came first. Ginny had to be satisfied with what was left over. To have been the kind of husband she needed, I would have had to settle for being something less than the kind of doctor I wanted to be. I made my choice. It wasn't a conscious decision. And I never really saw it before. But now that Ginny's gone and the practice is gone, it's all very clear. Too often my mind was someplace else. I cheated on her every hour of every day."