Travis's hands stilled on his belt buckle. "Would you mind repeating that?"
"You heard."
"We've just been as intimate as a man and woman can be, and now you want me to vanish from your life?"
Chilled to the bone, Julie wrapped her arms around her waist. "Yes," she said, "I do."
His eyes never leaving her face, Travis reached for his shirt. "You don't think two people should be involved in that decision?"
Flinching from his sarcasm, she said, "It's precisely because I don't want to be part of a couple that I'm making the decision."
"Do you have to sound so cold-blooded?"
He sounded anything but. Unbidden, an image of his face at the moment of climax flashed into her mind. Julie shoved it away, pain lancing her heart. "I'm trying to avoid disappointment in the future," she cried. "For both of us."
"You let me look after myself," Travis said grimly. "You're looking for guarantees, Julie, that's what you're doing. There aren't any, haven't you learned that yet?"
"I won't commit to any kind of long-term relationship with you … so what's the point of seeing you again? We'll both end up getting hurt."
"I don't understand-you've lived in India and Tanzania, yet you won't take the smallest of gambles in your personal life. What kind of parents have you got?"
"The kind that are a perfect advertisement for singlehood," she flared. "Travis, I have the right to say I don't want to see you again, and I'm exercising that right."
Doing up the buttons on his shirt, he said, "You're denying yourself the possibility of falling in love, of marriage and bearing children … is that the way you plan to live for the rest of your life?"
"The first time we met, you told me it was against your principles to belong to anyone!"
"Maybe I've changed." he said.
"Then that's your problem." She had to end this. "It would have been better if this afternoon had never happened, I was a fool to even let you in the door."
"You were the one who instigated our lovemaking."
"I made a mistake!"
"So an experience that damn near knocked me off my feet was nothing but a mistake?"
"Stop it! I can't take any more of this. Just go away and leave me alone, Travis-that's all I ask."
"You don't have a worry in the world," he said savagely, turned on his heel and left the bedroom.
Julie opened her closet door, grabbing a skirt and blouse off the hangers. She was trembling again, just as she'd trembled when Travis had undressed her. But now it was nothing to do with desire.
Dimly, as if the sounds came from another world, she heard Travis's shoes scrape on the front mat; then the apartment door slammed shut.
He'd gone.
She'd done the right thing. She knew she had. Yet all she wanted to do was throw herself across the bed and cry her eyes out. In the space of a few minutes, she'd plummeted from the bliss she'd found in his arms to this dead despair.
For it had been bliss. She'd felt whole, perhaps for the first time in her life. Travis had made her complete.
With a tiny moan of dismay, Julie ran for the bathroom and turned on the shower. Ten minutes later, dressed and more or less presentable, she hurried into the kitchen. She'd scrap making the Moroccan chicken. She had time to do the dishes, run a mop over the kitchen floor and thaw some pasta sauce that she had in the freezer. Thank heavens she'd made the cheesecake this morning.
Before all this had happened. Before her life had changed irreversibly.
Quickly Julie filled the sink with hot water. She mustn't think about Travis; she couldn't afford to. She squirted detergent into the sink and tossed in the dirty cutlery; when the buzzer sounded twenty minutes later, the clean dishes were stacked in the tray, the kitchen floor had dried, she'd added extra scallops and shrimp to the sauce and she'd just thrown the place mats on the table. The other thing she'd done was bury the sweet peas Travis had brought her in the depths of the garbage can.
Taking a long, deep breath, Julie walked to the door, opening it wide. "Hello Mum, Dad," she said, and lifted her cheek to be kissed. Her parents didn't do hugs.
"Hello, Julie," her mother said. "You look very flushed, are you feeling all right?"
"Of course she is," her father said heartily. "You're like me, never ill. Right, Julie?"
This was a not-so-subtle dig at his wife Pearl, who enjoyed a variety of ailments, many of them genuine. The minor heart attack she'd had in the spring had been lumped with everything else by her husband; Julie, more knowledgeable, had been encouraging her mother to eat a little less and exercise a little more.
Pearl ignored her husband's comment, passing Julie her wet raincoat. "What a terrible day … oh, you didn't get around to laying the table?"
How well Julie knew that air of faint reproach; all too often it had been directed her way. "A friend dropped in unexpectedly," she said, opting for a censored version of the truth. "So I'm not quite ready."
Her mother headed right for the kitchen. "Seafood pasta, how nice … you've heard they've been having trouble with the local scallops, have you? Some kind of algal growth."
"No, I hadn't heard," Julie said evenly. "Can I get you a glass of wine?"
"I'll stick to fruit juice, dear. Much better for you."
"Do you know why the French live longer?" Thomas Renshaw interposed. "Red wine, proven to cut down on heart attacks."
Julie said dryly, "I've only got white, Dad."
"If you'd had red, he'd have wanted white," Pearl said with a merry little laugh. "Wouldn't you, darling?"
Julie winced. "Speaking of heart attacks, how are you feeling, Mum?"
Pearl discussed her cholesterol level, her blood pressure monitor and the new cardiologist she'd seen last week. "Such a sweet man, I should introduce you to him, Julie."
Julie didn't want to meet another doctor. "You've had your hair done, it looks nice."
"It didn't turn out at all the color I wanted. I'll just have to change salons again."
"Are there any you haven't tried?" Thomas said, accepting a glass of wine. "I can't see what the big fuss is all about."
"When you had a full head of hair, you used to fret every time the barber cut it," Pearl remarked.
This was a double blow, for Thomas hated being almost bald; and was still fussy about how the remnant was cut. Julie turned away, taking knives and forks out of the drawer. "Would you mind putting these out, Dad? And the candlesticks are on the coffee table … it's almost dark enough to light them, isn't it?"
She was exhausted already, she thought unhappily, taking some rolls out of the bread box and turning on the oven to heat them. Then she bent to find the ingredients for a tossed salad from the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. Pearl took advantage of her husband's temporary absence to say, "Your father doesn't look well, but he refuses to go to the doctor … you just don't know what I have to put up with."
"You're not backward about telling me, Mum."
Pearl gave a theatrical sigh. "Well, you're my only child, who else can I tell?"
Do you love your husband? The question hovered on the tip of Julie's tongue. Exasperated with herself, she bit it back. What was the point of asking? For as long as she could remember, Thomas and Pearl had existed in an outwardly polite state of constant warfare. No overt anger, no attempt to solve their differences; just an incessant sniping at each other that Julie loathed. There were lines of discontent in her mother's carefully made-up face; her father's faded hazel eyes held neither hope nor laughter. She said with attempted cheer, "I made a fabulous cheesecake for dessert, you'll like it."
"Too many calories, I'm sure."
"You worry them off faster than you put them on," Julie teased. "Anyway, I used low-fat ingredients."
"When you've been married as long as I have, you have to keep up your appearance," Pearl said. "The pasta's boiling over, Julie."
Julie turned the heat down, set the timer and slung chopped tomatoes in the salad bowl. Luckily she had some homemade dressing left. Ten minutes later, they sat down to eat; her parents, as she'd learned long ago, didn't believe in dining after six-thirty.
The candles flickered light and shadow on the ceiling, and rain streaked the windowpanes. Pearl said, "I really must make you some curtains, Julie, anyone can look in."