Heaven"s Price.
By: Sandra Brown.
Synopsis: Embracing a life most people only dream about, Blair devoted her days as well as her nights to dancing on Broadway. Now an injury has sent her to a small town for six long months of recuperation. And there, unable to lose herself in her dancing, Blair is caught off guard by her attraction to her new landlord, Sean Garrett.
Copyright 1995.
Blair carted the big box up the top three stairs. Squeezing herself between it and the jamb, she maneuvered it through the door and dropped it down on top of two others piled just inside the door. Her arms quivered from the exertion. Her legs ached.
"Thank heaven that"s the last one," she said to herself on an exhalation that escaped her lips slowly and leisurely. With rigid arms she braced herself over the top of the box and tried to catch her breath. When she straightened, she noticed the tightness of the muscles in her lower back and groaned. Was there any part of her body that didn"t ache?
Glancing down at her wrist.w.a.tch, her lips thinned with irritation.
She had called the YMCA over two hours ago and asked them to send over a ma.s.seur. Not having changed residences in more than eight years, she had for gotten how physically exhausting moving could be. A ma.s.sage was the most relaxing thing she could think of. Since her telephone hadn"t been installed yet, she had driven to the nearest service station and used the pay phone. The receptionist who answered the Y"s telephone had a.s.sured her that someone would be sent over within an hour.
"So much for efficiency," she muttered to herself, whisking off the bandana-print scarf she had tied around her long dark hair. It tumbled to the middle of her back like a bolt of satin being unrolled. If the staff of the YMCA typified the pace of life in this provincial backwater town, she"d be a raving maniac in a week.
She gazed around the three-room apartment that would be her home for the next six months. It didn"t look like much now with boxes and bundles heaped on its hardwood floors, but with a little imagination, she hoped she could make it at least livable. Pam had a.s.sured her that it was the best and most private place in town, ". . . unless you want to live in one of those sterile apartment complexes, which I"m sure you don"t," she had added.
Upon arrival from the city to the small town on the Atlantic side of Long Island where her friend Pam Delgado had moved several years ago, Blair had to admit that living in a garage apartment behind a victorian house on a quiet, tree-shaded street had more appeal than living in a concrete cracker box.
She skirted the maze of boxes as she made her way to the small kitchen on the other side of the large room that served as both living and sleeping area. She had been pleased to see that the refrigerator was no more than two decades old and had a bucket inside the freezing compartment in which to empty ice trays. Taking out a few cubes, she plunked them into a tall gla.s.s she"d managed to find earlier and popped off the top of a diet soda can. Just as it was foaming over the ice, someone knocked on the door.
"Wouldn"t you know it," she grumbled. Taking a sip of the not yet cold drink, she weaved her way through the boxes again and pulled open the door.
"It"s about time," she said querulously.
"I beg your pardon," the man on the doorstep said.
Blair"s green eyes were level with a ma.s.sive chest and she had to lift them a considerable distance to greet the most intriguing pair of eyes she"d ever encountered. Startlingly blue, they were surrounded by thick, curling lashes, dark at the lashline and gilded at the tips. A network of weblike lines, white against darkly tanned skin, extended from the outer corners of his eyes to fade into his temples. Brows well defined, but thick, arched over the eyes that were examining her as closely as she was him.
To avoid that careful scrutiny, she quickly lowered her eyes, mistakenly thinking that would be the safest thing to do. She wasn"t prepared for them coming to rest on a golden-brown mustache, the exact color of the brows that framed his eyes. The mustache curved over a wide, sensuous mouth. Beneath sculptured lips was a strong, firm chin with a vertical dent carved into its center. She avoided a.n.a.lyzing that too, and lifted her eyes to take in a well-designed nose, slightly concaved cheeks, and a.s.sertive cheekbones, which brought her back to those eyes. They hadn"t wavered from her face.
All in all, it was the most marvelous a.s.sembly of masculine features Blair had ever seen. She felt like stammering, but somehow managed not to when she demanded, "Didn"t anyone tell you how to get here?"
He shook the head that was capped with blond wavy hair, slightly silvered at the temples. "No."
"Well, it"s no wonder you"re over an hour late. None of the streets in this town are marked with signs," she said crossly. Stepping aside, she said, "Come on in. I need you more now than I did when I called."
He stepped through the door and she closed it behind him to conserve the air that flowed from the onewindow air-conditioning unit that cooled the entire apartment. He hadn"t brought any equipment in with him, only a body that would intimidate the most fearsome professional football lineman.
Clad in white shorts and a navy-blue T-shirt, the man looked marvelous.
Blair could see that the tan that bronzed his face covered the rest of him, as did that fine curly golden hair. His legs were long and lean, but muscles rippled in his calves and thighs as he made slow progress around the first boxes blocking his path. Blair excused her interest in those muscles as purely professional. She was well acquainted with every muscle of the human body, its use, and how to treat it.
"Didn"t you bring a portable bed or table or anything with you?" she asked.
He stopped suddenly and turned around to face her. "No."
She sighed. "It"s just as well. I don"t know where we would have put it. I"ve already padded the kitchen table with a quilt. Will that be all right?" He turned his head to eye the table dubiously. "I haven"t made up the bed in the sofa yet and didn"t want to plow through all these boxes looking for linens. I need you right now. Do you mind doing it on the kitchen table?"
His eyes crinkled at the corners, but there wasn"t even the slightest smiling twitch of his mustache when he answered levelly, "Not at all."
His laconic answers annoyed her. She felt like a babbling moron while he remained aloof, watching her with indulgent amus.e.m.e.nt. He hadn"t even apologized for being late. But then he didn"t look like a man to whom apologies would come easily. He was looking at her steadily with a curiosity he couldn"t disguise. She strongly suspected that lying just beneath his placid features was a booming laugh dying to be freed.
Why, she couldn"t fathom.
She tracked the path his eyes took down the length of her pet.i.te body.
Never having known a moment"s modesty in her life, the sudden impulse to cover herself was foreign, but there nonetheless. His eyes seemed to wash over her, leaving behind a blushing stain everywhere they touched.
There was certainly nothing alluring in her attire, yet his slow, silent appraisal made her feel that the denim cut-offs and white eyelet halter-top were the flimsiest of negligees.
Had he made some lascivious remark like the ones that were often thrown to her on the streets of New York, she would have flung back a scathing insult. Or had he commented clinically on her good muscle tone, the length and formation of her legs, her graceful carriage, she would have thanked him and never given it a thought. Those kinds of comments she could handle. The ones eloquently transmitted by his eyes, she had no comebacks for.
"Well, shall we get started?" The corners of his mouth lifted in the suggestion of a smile.
His voice sent a shiver up her spine. It seemed to caress her ears with its deep rumbling timbre. How else could it sound since it originated in that chest? "Don"t you want me to undress first?"
One brow leaped into a quizzical arch over his eye. "I guess so.
Yes."
"I"ll be just a minute then." She hurried into the bathroom where earlier she had brought out an old sheet from one of the boxes. Her fingers fumbled with the fastening on her shorts. What was wrong with her? Why was she so nervous? She"d had ma.s.sages before, many in the privacy of her apartment in Manhattan.
Never had she been anxious about it. She hadn"t been anxious about this one until she"d seen the ma.s.seur. Maybe if the guy bothered her so much, she shouldn"t go through with it.
One shooting pain from her legs told her she would be foolhardy to pa.s.s up this opportunity. Her abused muscles needed soothing, and the doctor had recommended this sort of therapy. She was being silly. In her nearly thirty years, she"d never been fainthearted about anything.
Wrapping the sheet around her naked body, she boldly opened the bathroom door and stepped out.
"I take it you didn"t bring any lotion either," she said, brushing past him disdainfully.
"No, I didn"t bring any lotion."
"I should be glad. Sometimes the lotions ma.s.seurs use smell medicinal.
You can use this." She handed him the plastic bottle of lotion she"d brought from the bathroom. It was scented with her favorite fragrance.
"And here are some towels for when you . . . for when you need them,"
she finished self-consciously, extending him the folded terrycloth towels.
She wished he wouldn"t look at her as though he were about to devour her. She had shared matchboxsized dressing rooms with men and women all racing to get into the next costume change. Often she"d been forced to forgo a trip to the dressing room and change just offstage with no screening whatsoever. Why now was she seized by a maidenly awareness of her nakedness beneath the sheet?
In hopes of distracting him from his absorption with her bare shoulders, she said, "I . . . I was drinking a soda when you arrived.
Would you care for one?"
"No thank you. Maybe when we"re done."
She looked away from him and moved to the rectangular table in the kitchen that was barely long enough for her to lie on. She had draped it with an old quilt she"d found in the top of one of the apartment"s two closets.
"That looks comfortable," he said.
"The table?"
"The quilt."
"Oh," she looked down at the faded spread. "I guess so. It isn"t mine.
It came with the apartment."
"I take it you"re just moving in." Yes." She turned her back to him and lay face down on the table, stretching out and adjusting herself as comfortably as she could. The quilt didn"t do much in the way of padding the hard surface. Raising herself up, she unfolded the sheet and spread it out on either side of her until her front was lying directly on the laundered-soft quilt. Folding her hands one on top of the other, she lay her cheek on the back of the top one and turned her face away from him.
"Do you like the apartment?"
"It"s okay for someplace temporary. I"ll be here six months at the most."
"Are you from the city?"
"Not originally," she answered. She held her breath for a moment when she felt him raise the sheet and slide a towel over her hips, covering them.
"Originally where are you from?"
"Minnesota." The word came out in a gush of air as his palm held the towel over her hips in place while he tossed the sheet aside. Naked but for the towel, which felt about as large as a Band-Aid across her derriere, she could all but feel his scorching blue eyes as they surveyed the expanse of bare skin.
Long moments pa.s.sed. He didn"t speak. She didn"t breathe. Neither moved. Finally, unable to bear the suspense, she turned her head toward him. "Is something wrong? " He cleared his throat. "No.
Nothing. I was just flexing my fingers."
"Oh." She felt rather than saw his movements as he poured some lotion onto his palm and spread it to the other one by rubbing his hands together.
Then his hands settled on her shoulders. Moving slowly at first, he bore down gently on the tense muscles and smoothed the scented lotion over them. Increasing the pressure slightly, his hands began to work a magic and Blair felt her tension dissolving.
"Have you worked for the Y long?"
"The Y?"
"Yes, have you worked there long?"
"Uh . . . no. Actually I don"t work there. I sort of free-lance .
"I see. Do you have enough clients to keep you busy in a town this size?"
"You"d be surprised."
Both hands were on one shoulder now, squeezing the ever-relaxing muscles. "Your hands don"t feel like most ma.s.seurs". They have calluses."
"I"m sorry."
"I wasn"t complaining. It was only an observation."
"I work out with weights fairly often. They leave calluses."
"So you"re into all kinds of physical fitness."
"I guess you could say that."
"I thought so. You seem very fit."
"So do you." He chose that moment to slide his hands from her shoulders to just beneath her raised arms where his fingers curved into the tender, sensitive skin. The heels of his hands were planted in the groove of her spine and Blair realized how large and strong they were.
With only the merest pressure, they could crack her ribs. She breathed easier when they began a gradual descent and his fingers were no longer touching that particular spot underneath her arms.
"I"m a dancer. I have to stay in shape."
"What kind of dancer? A ballerina?"
"I attend ballet cla.s.s every day to work out, but I dance mostly in musical comedies."
"Hey! What shows have you been in?"
She laughed lightly. "At one time or another nearly all of them, both on and off Broadway. Sometimes with a road company for months at a time."
"You"ve been at it for a long time then."
"Yes. Since graduating from high school. Much to my parents" dismay, I came to New York when everyone else was going off to state college."
"They didn"t want you to?"
"That"s an understatement. Even getting my degree by going to night cla.s.ses didn"t convince them that I wasn"t on the road to destruction.
I had told them for years that I was going to New York to study and dance and they humored me, thinking I"d outgrow the notion, or that I"d meet some nice hometown boy and replace hopeless dreams with marriage."
" But you didn"t. " "No."
"Surely they"re proud of you now."
"Yes, but it"s a qualified pride," she replied slowly. Reminders of the heartache she had brought her parents always made her sad. For so many years she had sought their approval of her way of life. It was an impossible dream that she would never attain, for they would never .