Just One Night: The Stranger Part 12

A trickle of foreboding works its way down my spine. I know where my place is now. It's with Dave. I had my last hoorah with Robert Dade.

I'll go to the meeting for the sake of ambition and in spite of the l.u.s.t, which I will have to repress. I'll go to the meeting to say good-bye.

I select a Theory suit, not as provocative as the clothes I wore the day he last saw me but significantly more stylish than my regular garb. I pair it with a satin blouse that could pa.s.s as menswear if it wasn't for the fabric. He will not shake me.

Or if he does, he won't see it.

It's not until I'm in the car, plugging the address into the navigation, that Sonya's words come back to me. The marina?

For a split second I consider removing the keys from the ignition. Why would I meet this man at a marina? The location is too soft, too romantic, whispers of too many fantasies of just sailing away from it all.

But he knows I'll come and so I turn the key.

I PULL INTO the parking lot lining the peninsula. Moorings holding pleasure crafts are surrounded by high-rise condos and hotels. It's fantasy meets urban reality-an appropriate metaphor for my current predicament. But I can't have both. I have to give up the fantasy.

My cell buzzes with a new text message. It's from him. He simply tells me where to park, where to walk, which gates to open. The text is eerily well timed. It's as if he has a sixth sense when it comes to me.

I study his words again. He's instructing me. Just as he instructed me that one night in Vegas . . . just as he had instructed me when he had watched me through his computer screen. But perhaps these instructions are more benign?

No, not benign. Nothing about Robert Dade is benign. And neither is my eagerness to follow his directives.

As I walk away from my car to the gate that he told me to walk through, the Ritz-Carlton to my left, the ocean to my right, I find myself wondering what he'll ask me to do next.

It's hot; the jacket comes off. Even satin isn't right for this setting but it'll have to do. I follow the steps and go down the dock, pa.s.sing sailboats, restaurants, tourists, and palm trees until I find the place where I'm supposed to turn . . . toward the horizon. And I see him, standing on top of a small yacht, wearing another cheap T-s.h.i.+rt, charcoal gray this time so it matches his hair; his jeans are faded. . . . I can't tell if they're old or simply designed to look that way. Doesn't matter.

I walk to him, just as he asked, but stop when I'm still several feet away from the boat.

"Are we meeting in the yacht club?" I ask from the dock.

"No, come aboard."

I'm pained by how much I want to heed his request. I want to let him take me on yet another adventure. I want to follow my devil's lead.

But I shake my head. "There are plenty of restaurants for us to have our lunch meeting."

He studies me for a moment. "Is everything all right?"

It's a good question. Maybe it isn't right now but surely it will be if I just stay strong. I press my lips together and give a stiff nod.

"If I come down there, I will not be a gentleman."

He's teasing but the threat scares me anyway. Everything has changed. I am now officially engaged and everyone, my friends, my parents, my colleagues, they all know it. If Robert does anything to give me away, the consequences will coat my world with humiliation. I can't even let myself think about it.

"I could turn around and leave right now," I say. The wind picks up and lifts my hair with a silent force. I wore it down again and I'm getting used to the way it feels when it moves. I'm getting used to the way Mr. Dade's words move me, too, and that's a problem. I will myself to turn away from him. "I'm not here for that, Mr. Dade."

"Ah, so we're back to formalities." There's a question there. He doesn't understand the degree of the s.h.i.+ft. He thinks I've just gotten a little scared . . . or that maybe I'm teasing him back.

"I think . . . for a lot of reasons, we should strive for a more . . . professional decorum. I . . . I'm afraid I let things get a little too familiar. It won't happen again."

He pauses, studies me. "I a.s.sume you've heard the story of the boy who cries wolf?" he asks, deadpan. "You realize that you don't have a lot of credibility in this area."

"I'm serious this time."

"As opposed to last time, when you were just joking?"

"I'm not getting on the boat."

I roll back my shoulders and meet his gaze. I wait for the anger, the hurt, the bewilderment that must be coming. But his poker face is flawless. I can't predict what hand is about to be played. . . .

Until he smiles-it's the smile I get when I realize I'm playing chess against a worthy adversary. It's the smile of someone who knows he's about to win against the best.

"If I come down there, Miss Fitzgerald, I will kiss you"-he raises his hand as I start to protest-"and I won't stop there. I will touch you the way you want me to touch you."

"Quiet!" I hiss.

I look around self-consciously. I don't see anyone on the nearby boats but that doesn't mean anything. We're in public, his voice is strong, I can't count on the ocean breeze carrying his every word out to sea.

"You do want that, don't you, Kasie?" He says, his voice keeping the same steady volume-the tenure low, insistent, confident. "You want me to touch you right here, in full daylight so that everyone in that bistro only a stone's throw away would see you. You want the audience. You want me to pull off the mask in front of everyone."

"I can't get on the boat," I say, but now it's my voice that's getting weaker. He has no right to say these things to me . . . and I have no right to want them.

But the fantasies are tiptoeing into my consciousness. On the desk in front of my team, on the couch in front of his friends . . . walking through a casino wearing a Herve Leger dress, everyone looking at me, seeing me as the woman I'm not supposed to be.

"Come aboard," he says, softer, kinder. "Nothing will happen that you don't want to happen. Remember, all you have to do is say no."

Hadn't I said no? Hadn't I said I can't get on the boat? Wasn't can't the same as no?

But it wasn't. Can't spoke to what I was capable of doing and what I wasn't. No wasn't about capabilities; it was about desire.

I had no desire to say no.

Carefully, I find my way onto the boat.

He meets me, kisses me innocently on the cheek, but his hand slips between us and I gasp as he applies a slight pressure to the one spot that will always give me away.

"I didn't come for that," I say, stepping away.

"No, you came to work." He walks over to a bottle of sauvignon blanc that's been chilling in a bucket. "You would never come here just because you want me to touch you again, although you do. You wouldn't come just because you feel alive when you're with me. You wouldn't come because I'm the only one you can be your true self with. But for work? Yes, for work you'll always come."

He pours a gla.s.s of the white wine and offers it to me. The drink reminds me of Dave. I shake my head.

"I'm not my true self when I'm with you. I don't know who I am."

"That's the problem," he says, taking the wine for himself. It's the first thing he hasn't tried to push on me since I arrived. "You don't know who you are. You even had me describe you to you last time we met and you still can't figure it out. Normally that would be enough to make me lose interest. Self-awareness is s.e.xy. Delusions are not."

The sun is at my back and yet I reach into my bag and pull out my sungla.s.ses. I sense that I'm going to need as many layers of protection as possible. "You think I'm delusional?"

"At times. It doesn't suit you."

"If it's such a turnoff, maybe you should back the f.u.c.k off."

Robert Dade bursts into laughter. It's an easy laugh with just a touch of opulence. It softens my edges and makes me want to step toward him rather than away.

"Like I said, I would. But the thing is," and with this it's he who takes a step forward, "the woman who you really are . . . the one who you keep so tightly under wraps, the woman who is only allowed out when she is touched a certain way, made to feel certain things . . . that woman is so d.a.m.n compelling . . . I can't seem to turn away."

Turn around and leave. Tell him that the engagement has been announced.

But I don't say a word. My voice was carried off with the wind.

"I want that woman," he says again, taking another step. "And not just in the bedroom. I want to know what she's like over a candlelight dinner. I want to see her on the beach. I want to know what it would feel like to walk beside her talking about the thoughts you never let her share."

"I'm getting married."

"To a man you don't love."

"He's the man I want."

"What a seductive little liar you are."

I lift my chin and strike him with a defiant glare. A flash of respect . . . I see it in his eyes . . . but then maybe it's always there. Respect for me in those hazel eyes of his . . . but then it's not for me. It's for this woman he thinks I'm hiding from him. A woman I don't want to be.

"I want Dave Beasley."

"Do you?" His voice is gentle now but it's impossible to miss the hint of sarcasm. "What exactly do you want him to do to you?"

"Don't be crude."

"Do you want him to keep you in line?"

I don't answer. Robert is very close now. If he takes one more step forward, we'll be touching.

But he doesn't. Instead he circles me the same way he did in that Venetian hotel room.

"Do you want him to suppress your true nature? Keep you on the leash you made for yourself?"

"Shut up." My whispered tone contradicts the meaning of the words. I feel him behind me although he still isn't touching me.

"Do you want him to confine you? Are you afraid you won't be able to do that job all by yourself?"

His breath tickles my ear as he moves to my right. I wait for him to complete the circle but he doesn't. He just stands there at my side, facing me. If I lean in, just a little, the top of my head will touch his chin. My shoulder will touch his chest; my hand, his thigh.

I continue to stare straight ahead, thankful for my dark gla.s.ses. They mute the colors that are just a little too bright today.

"Look at my hand," I say quietly.

He pauses, perplexed by what seems like an odd request. But then he sees it, lifts it up so the light hits it just so.

"He bought me a ruby," I say as he studies the stone. "Not a diamond ring, a ruby."

"Whose idea was that?"

Again I don't answer.

"It was yours." He says the words with the tone of pleasant surprise. And now he does reach out. He moves my hair away from my face. I don't turn to look at him.

"You let the woman you're trying to destroy pick your ring."

"This isn't Sybil. There is only one me."

"Oh I know . . . and it's you, the only true you, that I want. Not the facade who smiles sweetly and pretends that she's some white rose . . . delicate, bland, weak."

"Did you call me here for a business meeting, Mr. Dade?"

"I want to tear that facade away." He lifts his hands and clutches at the air around my body as if he could literally pull away some invisible force field. "I want to throw it in the ocean where you'll never be able to get your hands on it again. I don't want you on that leash, Kasie. I don't want to confine you, I don't want to control you. I want to set you free."

"Says the man who practically blackmailed me into boarding this boat."

"Ah, yes. But that's different. For now it seems I have to practically blackmail you to do what you want to do. I want you to do those things on your own. I want you to indulge your desires the way you indulge your ambition."

"Don't be stupid."

"If you did, you would be unstoppable."

"I love him."

He hesitates. He hadn't seen that coming.

"I love him," I say, louder this time.

"Ah," he murmurs. "That lie is less alluring."

"You had s.e.x with me." My voice is even, cold. "You know my body, you even know how to make it sing . . . but that's just chemistry. Dave knows my past, he knows how I think. . . . You know my body, Mr. Dade. Dave knows me."

"I doubt that."

"He knows where I come from."

"I'm sure. Just as I'm sure he knows where he wants you to go."

"No. He wants what I want. Not because he's trying to accommodate me but because we really do want the same things. That's what makes us compatible. You're the one pus.h.i.+ng me. What you and I have . . . it's just . . . just . . ."

"Chemistry," Robert finishes for me.

He steps away, takes a seat on one of his deck chairs. He drinks his wine a little too fast. Is he nervous? It's not an emotion I've ever a.s.sociated with him before.

"Do you know what chemistry is?" he asks.