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"No, not really. My mother wasn't fond of traveling, especially with a child, and my father was a workaholic."
"Wasn't fond?"
"She was killed in a car accident a little over two years ago."
"Oh. Sorry. What does your father do?"
"He's a doctor." I said.
Thatcher smiled.
"What?" I asked, holding my breath.
"I bet he's into psychiatric medicine. right?" "What makes you say that?"
"You're interested in the subject. It's common for children to want to do what their parents have done."
"Is your father an attorney?" I countered.
"Hardly," he said. My grandfather began the Eaton department store chain in New England. My father assumed an executive position the day after he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor of arts degree and practically no business education. His first executive act was to appoint someone who knew what he was doing to be his assistant, and then he got back to the golf course."
"He doesn't have a New England accent," I commented.
"All his life, he went to private schools here and in Europe. Not long after my mother and he were married, my grandfather passed away. My
grandmother had died the year before. and Daddy was the sole heir. He sold off a majority interest in the stores, and he and my mother came to Palm Beach for the season and then spent their winters on the Cote d'Azur, My sister and I attended private schools from the moment we could. I grew up thinking parents were people you visited on holidays."
"I had a nanny care for me most of my life," I confessed. His warm tone of revelation encouraged my own. "My mother wasn't really into being a mother. either."
"So, you see, we have a lot in common after all," he declared.
"I often wonder if I'll be that sort of parent." I looked up at him. "I bet you wonder the same thing, and that's why you're not involved with anyone."
"Oh," he said. smiling, "I'm being analyzed. Wonderful. What makes you so sure I'm not involved with anyone?"
"Your parents as much as said so. and you've asked me out to dinner in your hometown where people know you. Am I right?"
His smile seemed to turn more into a mask attempting to hide his true feelings. "It's so much more interesting and exciting for a man and a woman to leave some mystery, some questions between them, don't you think? If we analyze and examine each other too thoroughly, we'll touch old wounds, strip away some scars. Secrets are romantic," he added, returning that twinkle to his eyes.
"Okay," I said. seizing the opportunity. "No more revelations. No more personal questions. then."
"Let's drink to it," he said, pouring the remaining wine into our glasses.
He was a little too agreeable, too quickly. I thought. but I didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth.
We toasted, his eyes moving from boyish charm to manly interest as they swept over my face and made me aware of my own feelings. The wine was getting to me quickly because of my emotional fatigue. I thought. I was actually a bit frightened of myself of the warm feelings I felt when I looked at him, of the excitement in my heart and the way that excitement washed down over my breasts and into the small of my stomach.
I'd really believed I was in love with Allan, but maybe it was solely because I convinced myself I had to be. He was perfect and correct and confident, everything I expected a man for me should be, but after only a few hours with Thatcher. I felt something I had not felt before. It was as if his smiles, his eyes, his fingers touching my hand, had awakened some sleeping wildness within me. I could see myself shake out my hair. I could feel my eyes burning with desire. I could taste sex on my lips and feel the blood fill my face with exquisite he
at. Did he see this? I wondered and felt myself blush with embarrassment.
"Are you all right?" he asked when I looked down quickly.
"To be honest," I said, "I'm not used to drinking much, even wine at dinner."
"Good. I'll save money."
"Maybe I should go back to the hotel," I suggested.
