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A deeper, more disturbing thought flashed unbidden through her brain and it was more absurd and frightening than any of its predecessors. She couldn’t give credence to that. No!
She panicked. She ran.
She extricated herself from his warm embrace, painstakingly striving not to awaken him. She gathered her clothes and dressed with fumbling fingers. After quietly letting herself ou
t the door, she ran through the snowstorm to the lodge and demanded that the sleepy clerk prepare her bill and arrange for her transportation back to Salt Lake City. She assured him that it was an emergency when he hedged about traversing the mountain pass in a snowstorm. She avoided his probing, curious eyes.
In her room she packed her bags quickly, sobbing as she did so. She scrawled a hasty note to her friends, who would surely be alarmed over her sudden departure. She lied and said that her mother had called and an old family friend had taken sick and was not expected to live. The tale sounded ludicrous, even to her, but it was the best her fractured mind could come up with.
She fled into the night, arriving at the airport in Salt Lake City just as dawn was breaking, thankful that the old station wagon and the sleepy chauffeur who had driven it had made the trip safely. She caught the first airplane going east with a connecting flight to Atlanta.
* * *
This was the middle of September in Natchez, Mississippi. Those events had taken place in December on a snowy Utah mountain. It would soon be two years ago. Zack Prescott had haunted her ever since that night.
Thinking about it all now, she recalled that just before she left him, she had glanced toward the bed where he lay sleeping. His masculine form had been outlined by the soft sheet, his hair lay in tousled disarray on his forehead, and dark lashes rested on lean cheeks. A gnawing pain akin to hunger had almost altered her decision to flee then.
She felt that same pain now.
Three
Camille dressed for dinner with great care. She had brought to Natchez a white eyelet sundress, knowing that she would be able to wear it only once or twice before the lateness of the season forced her to store it away until next spring. It was one of her favorite dresses and, as she privately conceded, one of her most flattering. Two wide straps tied around her neck in a halter, leaving her back bare, and showing her tan to advantage. The neckline was discreetly plunging and the waist was gathered with a wide, jade green satin belt.
Camille had never liked her figure and had wept daily during her teen years when other girls began to show womanly curves. She had remained slender and only since young womanhood developed a generous bustline while retaining slim hips and thighs. Now she was envied by most of her peers who, after one or two babies, were finding it difficult, if not impossible, to match Camille’s youthful figure.
She sprayed perfume from an atomizer and watched the fragrant mist settle on the soft curls surrounding her face and brushing her shoulders. She had decided to let her hair go “natural.” Why fight it? In this Natchez humidity, any control on the curly tresses was temporary and futile.
Her heart leapt to her throat when she spotted Zack’s reflection in the mirror. He stood silhouetted beyond the screened door behind her. Camille had assumed she would walk over to the main house alone. It had never occurred to her that she would be provided an escort.
He raised his hand and knocked with deliberate emphasis. She flushed angrily at his mocking insolence.
“You may as well come in, Zack. How long have you been standing there?”
“That will give you something to worry about. I’ll admit that I haven’t been bored.” His smile was leering and Camille turned back to the mirror to put small pearl earrings into her pierced ears.
“I’m ready,” she mumbled. Why did he look so gorgeous? His cream-colored linen suit and baby blue shirt, which was open at the collar, emphasized his tan and the cerulean brilliance of his eyes. When he smiled his teeth were startling white in the dark face.
“Not quite. My father sent the lady a corsage made of buds from his own rose beds. I’ve been instructed to see that you wear them.”
He extended a small corsage of yellow roses tied with a white satin ribbon. “How lovely of him,” Camille exclaimed in a genuine feminine reaction to receiving flowers.
“Dearly, our housekeeper and Simon’s wife, made it up for him, but he picked the roses himself. He is completely smitten by you.”
Camille sniffed the delicate blossoms and raised her eyes to Zack’s. She was surprised to find him looking at her closely. The expression on his face was strange and Camille couldn’t quite name the emotion registered there, but it was immediately replaced by one of derision as her eyes met his.
“I’ll have to wear the corsage in my hair, I suppose. I don’t have a pin that will hold it onto my dress.”
With the flourish of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, Zack flipped back the lapel of his coat and produced a long straight pin with a pearl tip. “I was a Boy Scout. I came prepared.”
He took the corsage from her and, before she realized what he was going to do, slipped his fingers between her and the fabric of her dress. The touch of his warm hands against her flesh acted as a catalyst that set her heart racing, made breathing difficult, and sent a warm flush radiating out from the pit of her stomach and encompassing her whole body. Did she imagine that Zack’s fingers trembled slightly when they pressed into the top of her breast as he adjusted the pin behind the corsage? The flowers were secured, yet he made no move to extract his hand and she could feel his ragged breath on the top of her head. Slowly, she raised her eyes and took in the hair on his chest, the strong column of neck, the stubborn chin, the sensuous mouth, the long, slender nose and finally the blue eyes that pierced her with an alarming intensity. Her face was inches from his, but she felt an invisible barrier between them that neither of them was willing to breach. She quickly lowered her eyes and leaned away from him.
With a muttered oath, Zack jerked his hand out of her bodice. It was an abrupt movement and, in his haste, he had not been careful of the pin. It painfully pricked his finger.
“Damn,” he cursed as he examined the pinprick that sported a bright red bead of blood.
Camille acted instinctively and grabbed his hand. “Oh, Zack,” she cried. She brought his finger to her lips and sucked gently on it as she would have done her own had it been pricked. His sharp intake of breath brought it home to her what she was doing and the intimacy of it. She took his finger from between her lips and looked down on the wound that could barely be seen now. She released his hand as if it had burned her. “I… I think it will… will be okay now,” she stammered. She didn’t meet his eyes.
He crossed to the door and held it open for her as she scrambled past him.
