The Millionaire's Marriage Demand(14)

       
           



       

"You think I come on to women I've only just met?"

"How would I know?"

He said with vicious truth, "Whatever's swept you off your feet has knocked the feet right out from under me."

"And how you hate me for doing that to you!"

"Why don't you want to fall in love or get married?"

He'd gone right to the crux. "Two reasons," she said with an unhappy  laugh. "My father and my mother. And that's all you're getting out of  me." In a flurry of skirts, she stood up. "I'm sorry if I seemed to be  leading you on, I couldn't help myself. I'm going downstairs for  breakfast and then I'll leave with Oliver."

"I was a damn fool to ask if you really wanted to make love," Travis  said harshly. "If we'd just gone ahead and done it, you wouldn't be in  such a rush to get on the boat."

Her knee was hurting, her whole body was a huge ache of sexual  frustration, and all she wanted to do was curl up on the bed and sob her  heart out. "I'm glad you did ask. It's better for both of us this way."

He pushed himself to his feet. "We'll be in Portland for the summer, you and I. We're bound to meet up with each other."

"I'll do my best to see that doesn't happen."

"So this is goodbye," he said in an unreadable voice.

She gave him the faintest of smiles. "You'll have forgotten me in a couple of days, you'll see."

"Don't judge me by your own standards!"

Flinching from the fury in his face, Julie shoved her feet into her  sandals and ran for the door. But his voice stopped her, pinioning her  to the white-painted panels. "You're planning on forgetting me. On  forgetting what happens every time we get within ten feet of each other.  Aren't you?"

"I've got to!"

"Maybe it's time you started behaving like an adult instead of jerking  me around like a puppet on a string. On one minute, off the next. Or are  you going to let your parents run your life for the rest of your days?"

"You didn't have to kiss me, Travis."

"You know what I really hate? That I didn't have a choice," he said savagely.

"We all have choices," she retorted. "And I'm choosing to get out of here before we do any more damage."

"I wouldn't have called you a coward," he jeered. "Goodbye, Julie …  have a nice life."

She made a sound expressive of fury and frustration, whirled and banged  the door shut behind her. Impossible man. Infuriating, arrogant and  irresistibly sexy man. Scowling prodigiously, wincing at the pain in her  knee, Julie went downstairs and hurried across the hall. She stopped  short at the dining-room door, pasted a smile on her face and pushed it  open. The huge table was spread with ample bacon and eggs, along with a  gorgeous array of fruit, freshly baked croissants and coffee cakes. She  stood still in the doorway; her appetite had completely forsaken her.

Forcing herself to calm down, she went in search of Charles and Corinne.  They were outside on the patio. Calling on all her good manners, she  thanked them for a wonderful stay and made her escape. When she went  back to her room to get her bag, there was no sign of Travis. Nor was  he, to her infinite relief, on the dock by the boathouse. Oliver was  leaving in five minutes, he told her. She waited in an agony of  impatience, making conversation with four other guests who were also  leaving Manatuck. They all climbed aboard, and the launch pulled away  from the dock.

She went to stand by the bow. As the island receded, she stole one last  glance at it. But it wasn't the crenellated towers and absurd turrets,  or the bannered tents on the lawn that held her attention. It was the  lighthouse at the northeast tip of the island, where a dark-haired man  had kissed her on the grass, turning her into a woman she didn't even  recognize.

A woman of passion, who was afraid of that passion. More afraid than she'd ever been of anything in her life.





Left alone in Julie's bedroom, Travis stared unseeingly out of the  window. He'd made a fool of himself. A total and unmitigated fool.  Telling her she'd knocked him off his feet. Rambling on about having no  choice.                       
       
           



       

He'd been on the brink of begging her to go to bed with him. Begging? Him?

Thank heavens he hadn't sunk that low.

But how was he ever going to forget the sweet rise of her breast, the  racing of her pulse against his palm, the delicate scent of her skin? Or  the brilliant green of her irises when he'd kissed her, their depths  shot with fire? Why in hell had he blabbed on about summer affairs,  giving her the time to think?

If he hadn't, she'd have been his.

He banged his fist hard on the sill, almost relishing the pain. If he'd  been all kinds of a fool, at least he wasn't going to repeat his  mistakes. He'd make sure of that by never seeing her again. He only  rarely went to the clinic, and by the sound of it she wouldn't come near  the hospital; plus he had no intention of finding out her phone number.

What did he need her phone number for when he wasn't going to see her again?

Goodbye meant just that. Goodbye.

He was well rid of Julie Renshaw.





Travis stayed on Manatuck until the last of the guests had gone. He,  Corinne and Charles ate an informal supper on the patio, Travis doing  his best to sound more at ease than he felt. Then he got up. "I'll get  my bag, I told Oliver I'd be leaving in a few minutes."

"Fine, fine," Charles said. "Glad you could make it for the party,  Travis. You remember what I said …  Portland's too small for you, you'd be  better off heading overseas where there's more scope for your talents."

"I hear you, Dad." One more person who didn't want to see him again, he  thought with an inward wince. "Goodbye, Corinne," he added, "thanks for  everything."

She offered him the same cool cheek as when he'd arrived, just as though  the intervening two days hadn't happened. It was left for Oliver to say  at the wharf on the mainland, "You come back soon, Mr. Travis. Manatuck  ain't the same without you."

"Thanks, Oliver. Take care."

Julie's blue car was, of course, gone. Travis drove back to Portland,  parking his car and going upstairs to the condo that belonged to Mark  MacDonald and that he was renting for the summer. It was a very  desirable condo built on one of the wharves on the waterfront, in sight  of yachts and ferries and lobster boats. He'd made very little attempt  to imprint his personality on it; as he entered, its impersonality  struck him like a blow.

He wanted Julie here with him. That's what he wanted. Dammit, he didn't. He was tired, that's all.

He poured himself a drink. Night was already falling over the harbor,  the lights on the marina glittering like earthbound stars. Where did she  live? In Old Port, with its handsome brick buildings and cobblestone  streets? Or west of here, nearer to the clinic?

Was she thinking about him? Or had she already put him out of her mind, an incident that had happened and wouldn't be repeated?

He loathed the thought of being so summarily dismissed. Forgotten, like a garment she'd discarded.

Travis went to bed early, slept badly for the third night in a row and  did a ten-hour shift at the hospital the next day. Afterward, changed  into jeans and a T-shirt, he went to the grocery store nearest the  medical center. He could have eaten out; but he'd tired of that in his  first month here, and now preferred to cook something back at the condo.  He was frowning at the array of steaks, wondering if he'd barbecue on  the balcony, when a woman's voice said, "Travis? It is you, isn't it?"

He turned, recognizing the voice almost immediately. "Trish," he said warmly, "how are you? Long time no see."

"Eleven or twelve years," she said, shifting the carton of milk she was carrying to shake his hand.

She'd changed very little in those years, her long blond hair still in  an untidy knot on her head, her eyes the same warm brown. Travis had  been engaged to her his final year at medical school; for a moment he  felt like that young man again, head stuffed with knowledge, wanderlust  tugging him like a magnet even as he was pulled toward the more ordinary  longings for home and a family. He said impulsively, "Have you got time  for a drink? Or dinner?"                       
       
           



       

She consulted her watch. "A drink, I'm going to my inlaws for dinner, my  husband's out of town and they've been looking after the children for  me. Let me just pay for this."

He grabbed a steak, a few onions and some broccoli, and followed her.  Ten minutes later they were seated in a booth in a nearby pub. "To  chance meetings," Travis said, raising his glass. "Tell me about your  husband …  and how many children?"