A blind that was working with aching intensity inside his bloodstream. He’d been aroused from the minute they sat down, and he hadn’t even touched her. She had shied away from his touch; her game was all in look and scent and the low, soothing melody of her voice.

Deprivation was doing strange things to his rational thinking processes. He wanted his wife. He also knew that the moment he tried to make love to her again, that living nightmare of his would be back. He’d tried working endless hours; he’d tried avoiding her; and he’d tried giving himself time. Nothing had worked. Guilt seeped into him like an insidious poison. There wasn’t even a ghost of a chance of allowing himself his own sexual release.

Only that same physical deprivation was starting to add up to a little mountain of agony. It was almost funny. His hormones hadn’t been this active when he was a teenager.

He listened to her laugh at something he said, a sparkle of wine glistening on her bottom lip, her aquamarine eyes glowing like melted jewels, and wondered vaguely what she would do if he took her outside, leaned her up against a building, slipped those smooth, silky skirts up…

“Do you want more coffee?” he asked calmly as the waiter hovered over them.

She shook her head.

He watched her eyes dart to the dance floor for the third time. She wouldn’t ask; she knew he was tired. Good. There was no way on earth he wanted to risk touching her at all. No sane man invited torture.

“Craig?” She parted her lips to say something. It was the third time she’d done that, yet again she seemed to change her mind about what she wanted to say. “Darn it. I suppose we should be going home,” she remarked lightly.

“Not quite yet.” He set his napkin down and stood up. “Not yet,” he murmured again. A pulse flickered dangerously in his neck as he motioned her toward the dance floor. Her delighted smile made something in his jaw tighten. His palm lightly brushed the small of her back as he guided her around tables, so lightly that his fingertips only barely burned from the contact of the cool, silky fabric of her dress.

He meant to keep her at arm’s length when they were on the dance floor. The song was a love song, but not a favorite, unfamiliar, nothing that stirred any nostalgic, suggestive longings. He turned her to him and raised his hand simply to take hers…and instead found that damned errant hand sliding up her bare arm to her neck. And then the other one, just as damned, gliding around to the bare flesh of her back.

Sonia started and then ever so naturally moved in to him, her arms wrapping loosely around his waist, her cheek tucked into the curve of his shoulder. She made a small contented sound like the purr of a kitten as they moved in a gentle sway around the dance floor.

The first song ended, and another started. From nowhere, she suddenly lifted her head, her hooded blue-green eyes studying him. “Craig?”

“Hmm?”

“Nothing.” Her eyelashes rushed back down. “This feels good. We haven’t danced in forever.”

His lips pressed lightly on her forehead. “I think you’d better get around to telling me,” he whispered.

“Telling you what?”

“Whatever it is that’s been bothering you.”

She lifted her head again, her eyes suddenly flashing with amused exasperation. She hated it when he outthought her. “Nothing’s bothering me.”

His hands slid down her back in a slow caress, taking in her warm, smooth skin beneath the silky straps of her dress, taking in the shape of her spine and that narrow tapering at her waist. His voice was seductively gentle. “You wrecked the car.”

“Of course not!” Her head whipped back again, this time most indignantly.

His lips found the tip of her nose. “You gave the state trooper a merry chase on the highway again.”

“I haven’t had a ticket in over two years,” she reminded him.

“That you confessed to.”

“That I-there was only one other one,” she said irritably. “How did you-”

“So it isn’t that. You’ve overcharged on every account we have, and we’re both going to the poorhouse?”

She couldn’t help chuckling at his off-the-wall guesses. The pianist switched tunes, and she nuzzled her face close to Craig’s cheek, her arms moving up and around him where her fingers could reach the curling hair at the nape of his neck.

“Sonia…” he warned teasingly.

“Yes.” She sighed. “The thing is, what do you think about the Gulf of Mexico?”

“Pardon?”

“The Gulf of Mexico.”

“I think it’s a very nice body of water,” he said blandly, but when he tried to tilt his head to take a curious look at her, her cheek stayed molded to his shoulder.

“I like it, too,” she remarked.

“That’s nice.”

“What do you think about boats?”

“Does this conversation strike you as a little unusual, or is it me?”

“I like boats, myself,” Sonia continued stubbornly.

“I like boats, too. I suppose. Both of us having lived most of our lives in Wyoming, boats have just never been given a high priority.”

“You’ve been fishing with my dad up in the mountains,” she reminded him quickly. “You liked that boat.”

“Yes,” Craig agreed wryly. “I’m extremely fond of rowboats.”

“And big boats aren’t very different from little boats. They both float, for instance. Actually, big boats can be very easy to run.”

“Is that so?”

“That’s so.” Sonia took a huge breath. “I’ve found one that’s very easy to run. In the Gulf of Mexico. For four days. Starting Sunday.” One of them suddenly wasn’t dancing, but Sonia stayed firmly entrenched within the relative safety of his arms until he recovered a little from the shock. “I had to think of something to give you for our anniversary…”

“Our anniversary is six months away.”

“I’ve never remembered dates well,” she reminded him.

“Sonia,” he growled impatiently into her temple.

“It’s called a tri-cabin cruiser. A baby could run it, the man said. Everything’s taken care of-transportation, tickets, insurance. I talked to Mrs. Heath-she said next week wouldn’t be a bad time for you to leave. Charlie, by the grace of God, doesn’t mind taking care of things-”

“You’ve had one hell of a busy week,” he said abruptly.

“A little,” she agreed demurely. She’d only stopped panting that afternoon.

Her husband was silent for a time. The second love song stretched to a third one, a ballad about love and loss and tender memories. About the time of the second refrain, some of the stiffness seemed most unwillingly to rush from his body; he gathered her close again. His fingertips glided up and down, up and down, over her back in the rhythm of caress, the rhythm of intimacy.

She could feel the sway of her skirts against him and the softness of her breasts against his chest…and the arousal he was no longer trying to hide from her. Even massive shocks, she noted, had not appreciably affected the size or heat of that arousal. Through two layers of clothes, she could clearly feel him.

One of his hands strayed down to her hips, and lingered. She waited. His hand slipped back up to more appropriate territory, but after a time she heard the breath hiss from his lungs.

“You’re not wearing a damn thing under that dress,” he whispered in her ear.

“No,” she admitted. Dancing eyes suddenly peered up at him. “It was part of the campaign to distract you, so you would say yes,” she commented demurely. “Are you distracted?”

“Have you considered what it would look like if I dragged you down in the middle of this dance floor?”

Lord, he was suddenly restless. His voice was a low-pitched growl in her ear. He was moving to the rhythm of some song that certainly wasn’t what the pianist was playing. Craig’s song was infinitely slower, one about possession and fierce, swift loving. Sonia didn’t know the words, but she knew well the music of his body and understood in every feminine bone in her body the tempo his heartbeat was picking up.

“Are we going?” she whispered finally.

She studied the play of emotions on his face with an anxious feeling of waiting inside. He didn’t want to go; she knew that. He was looking for a way to say no to her. She could almost see him cataloging the problems in his head, from his work to the ranch, from timing to expense. Those, she knew, could be worked out.

She also knew he had never refused her anything that she had really wanted. And that, in the end, was what would make the difference, weigh in the balance against whatever reasons he really had for not wanting to be alone with her.

Her fingertips grazed his jawline, her soft eyes searching his, the frivolity gone. “It’s all right either way, Craig,” she said softly. “I just…love you. All I wanted was some special time with you, but if we absolutely can’t…”

There was so much tension in his face, a jagged, taut anxiety set in proud lines. And in the layer under that, she could not mistake the searing depth of sheer, rich love in his eyes. “So,” he said quietly, “what time did you say the plane leaves on Sunday?”


***

Craig jerked the pillow behind him and leaned up against it, tossing his trade magazine on the floor. Sonia was in the bathroom. He could hear her brushing her teeth.

He’d come home fully expecting Sonia to strip to the buff from her wanton white dress. She had, but out of sight in the bathroom. She’d appeared moments later in some granny nightgown he’d never seen before, and disappeared again. The next time her head darted around the door, there were gobs of white cream all over her face. Once he’d gotten a good look at that, she’d vanished again.

She’d been chattering about the trip to the Gulf the entire time, but the message that his lady had withdrawn from her irresistible-wench mood was unmistakable. She’d never before put white gunk on her face, and that blasted nightgown had come out of some attic.