17
Thank you again,” Katie called gaily, two days later. She wiped a smudge off her cheek, then waved goodbye to Rafael, his wife and his sons, who had been helping her clean the cottage, arrange furniture and hang curtains all day yesterday and today. She watched Rafael’s old truck clatter down the drive, then turned to Gabriella, who was tiredly pushing herself out of a chair.
They had been working since dawn and it was now late afternoon. “Do you think Ramon will be surprised?” Katie asked, her face wearing the same expression of happy exhaustion that she saw on Gabriella’s.
“Will he be surprised?” Gabriella repeated, her dark eyes shining with merriment. “Two days ago, there were workmen in here and the place was bare. Tonight when he sees it, every piece of furniture is in place, the bed is made and there are even candles and linen placemats on the kitchen table. Ramon will not be able to believe his eyes!” Gabriella predicted.
“I hope you’re right,” Katie said with a touch of pride. “I told him this house could be pretty, but he wouldn’t believe me.”
“Pretty?” Gabriella said with a shake of her head as she picked up her purse and trailed to the front door. “It is beautiful. You have a great talent for decorating, Katie.”
Looking at her, Katie thought of the endless miles they had driven together, the frenetic shopping expeditions, the exhausting hours of searching through shops. Through it all Gabriella had been cheerful and supportive. “Gaby,” Katie said softly, shaken by a deep surge of affection and gratitude, “You have a great talent for being a friend.”
A smile lit Gabriella’s features. “Strange, is it not—this kinship between us? We have known each other for only eleven days, yet you are almost like a sister to me.”
The two women, who had been sharing a bottle of wine while they worked, smiled sheepishly at each other, their faces flushed with drink and pleasure, then Gabriella turned and left.
Katie picked up Gabriella’s wineglass, drained the last drops from her own, and glanced at her wristwatch; it was five o’clock. Last night she had made Ramon promise to come here straight from work, which meant he ought to be arriving any time during the next half hour. In the kitchen she washed both glasses and set them on the new white Formica counter top so they would be ready when Ramon came.
Humming, she opened a cupboard and took out the other bottle of red wine and the corkscrew. Actually, she had already had enough wine. A little more than enough, she thought wryly. She was feeling rather warm and overexhilarated. But, she reminded herself gaily, the completion of the house was a very good reason for celebration.
She glanced around the kitchen. Cheerful and inviting, just as she had told Ramon it could be, she decided proudly. Above the wainscoting, the walls were covered in a bright green-and-white wallpaper. One wall displayed a collection of native wicker and straw baskets of every size and shape, which Katie had purchased for a fraction of what their price would have been in the States. All the cupboards had been stripped and repainted white, with an inset of wallpaper that matched the green and white on the walls.
She left the kitchen and wandered from room to room. In the bedroom, she paused to needlessly smooth the handmade coverlet on the bed. It was sewn in large squares, each square a different pattern, but each incorporating the basic colors of gold, white and brown. Gold curtains hung at the wide windows, harmonizing and complementing the dark oak dresser and headboard, and the thick gold carpet that partially covered the polished oak floor. She straightened the folds of the curtains so that they hung gracefully on either side of the windows. The room was perfect, she decided.
And masculine.
Katie pushed the unwanted thought aside and sauntered into the living room. She had spent about three thousand dollars of her own money, but it was worth it, she thought proudly. The rust-colored sofa with its rolled arms and thick tufted back was positioned opposite two chairs upholstered in nubby cream and rust threads. A broad expanse of sculptured cream carpeting stretched between them on the polished floor. The huge coffee table with its burl-wood inlays and narrow brass trim had been her biggest extravagance, but when she had seen it she couldn’t resist it, or the matching lamp table between the two chairs. Or was the antique hammered brass lamp her biggest extravagance? Katie couldn’t recall, but it didn’t matter anyway. The room, with its rough-textured cream curtains and long windows, was rich and inviting and perfect.
And masculine, a little voice whispered.
Katie studiously ignored it and went into the bathroom where she washed her face and brushed her hair. Her eyes were shining with expectation when she looked at herself in the mirror above the new vanity. Or were her eyes just glassy from too much wine? Katie shrugged and glanced around the bathroom. Had she gone too ultramodern here, she wondered apprehensively. Since the bathroom fixtures were white, she had carried the theme into the wallpaper, using a shiny white paper with bold reprints of newspapers printed on it. At the time she had thought herself clever; if Ramon got tired of the black and red towels he could substitute another color for the red and it would seem like a whole new bathroom. She dried her hands on a red hand towel, then carefully refolded it and placed it on the vanity atop the black one. The rest of the towels should have arrived at the store in the village by now. Tomorrow she would stop and pick them up after she saw Padre Gregorio.
She cast a last glance over the bathroom, her head tipped consideringly to the side. It might be a little too modernistic for the rest of the house, but it was certainly vivid.
And masculine.
Katie finally admitted it—but if it were true, then surely Ramon would be pleased. After all, he was very masculine. She went over to the coffee table in the living room and began rearranging the bright yellow and orange flowers in the center.
The maroon Rolls-Royce glided to a purring stop on the shoulder of the road a few feet beyond the dirt track that led up to the cottage. Ramon glanced impatiently at the long red canopy of blossoming flamboyant trees, deliberating over having Garcia drive him to the front door of the cottage. He was eager to see Katie, and he didn’t want to take the time to walk the two miles up the track. On the other hand, if Katie realized the chauffeur took him to and from work in the Rolls every day, she would naturally ask further questions. Questions he would have to either refuse to answer, or answer with blatant lies. Out of necessity he had misled her, but he would not lie to her.
“Wait for me at the usual place tomorrow morning,” he instructed Garcia. Ramon opened his door and climbed out of the car, without waiting for the chauffeur to reply. He knew that tomorrow morning at seven-thirty Garcia would be pulled over at the side of the road, waiting around a blind curve a half-mile from the village square. No questions asked, no explanations expected. Even though Garcia was no longer being paid, the old man still insisted on driving Ramon. “We have been together a long time, you and I,” Garcia had told Ramon at the airport the day Katie had come to Puerto Rico. With somber dark eyes and great dignity he had added, “Until this car is sold, I will do for you what I have always done.”
Walking up the track, Ramon thought of Garcia with mingled fondness and regret. If Ramon asked him to keep the motor running in front of a bank while he went in and robbed it, Garcia would do so without hesitation. His reward for twenty years of faithful service was going to be unemployment—and a letter of recommendation. Ramon wished he could give him more than that. He deserved more.
In the doorway of the cottage, Ramon stopped dead; the day’s worries and problems slipping away, forgotten. Katie was here, in his house, waiting for him. Sunlight streamed in the window, bathing her in a golden halo of light as she bent over something in the living room, rearranging sprigs of vibrant wild flowers in an earthenware bowl.
A feeling of deep contentment seeped through him, spreading its warmth through his veins. How strange that he had supposedly been one of the “richest” men in the world, yet he had never had this to come home to, never experienced this feeling before. He had come home to mistresses and servants, in mansions, penthouse apartments and villas by the sea. But he had never found this exquisite feeling of peace waiting for him—because he had never really come “home” at all. Katie was home.
People had envied him before; now they would pity him because he had lost his wealth. How incredibly stupid! Now he had Katie, and Katie made him very rich. This beautiful angel with the red gold hair and laughing blue eyes was going to bear his children and share his days and nights. She was everything that had always been missing from his life. She was joy.
Very quietly and without emphasis, Ramon said, “I love you, Katie.”
She whirled around, a smile lighting up her face. “Well?” she beamed at him. “What do you think?” Arms outstretched she turned in a circle, watching him expectantly over her shoulder.
Ramon knew she had heard him, and his heart sank at her lack of response, but he let it pass. “I think you are beautiful,” he said running his appreciative glance over the bright green velour top that left her midriff bare, and the matching shorts that revealed her long, shapely legs.
Katie rolled her eyes. “Not about me! About the house, the furniture, everything. . . .”
For the first time, Ramon looked at something besides Katie. What he saw dumbfounded him. “How did you manage to buy all this with the money I gave you? I never meant for you to have to stretch it so far. I intended to give you more when you said you were ready to look for furniture.”
Her face fell. “Don’t you like it?”
“Like it?” he grinned. “I have not even looked at it yet. But how—”
“Stop thinking about the money. I happen to be a terrific bargain hunter,” Katie said, linking her hand through his arm, and leading him from room to room.
Ramon’s reaction puzzled Katie. She could tell that he liked what she had purchased, and that he was pleased. He was lavish with his praise and his praise was genuine, yet something was bothering him.
She did not have long to wait to discover what it was. The kitchen was the last room on her guided tour. When Ramon had finished inspecting it, he walked over to the counter top where she had put out the wine. Katie watched him, admiring the way his long, capable fingers dealt with the corkscrew, deftly uncorking the bottle. “Well?” she said expectantly. “Now that you’ve seen the whole house, what do you think?”
“I think it is extremely attractive,” he said, pouring wine into both glasses. He handed one to her. “Are you planning to live here?”
The question stunned her into momentary silence, then she said, “Yes.”
“For how long?” he asked dispassionately.
The wine she had drunk was making her feel foggy. “Why are you asking me these questions?”
“Because there are two bedrooms in this house,” he said, watching her intently. “The second one, as I am sure you know, is meant for children. Yet you went to a great deal of trouble to furnish it with a handsome desk for me, bookcases and one overstuffed chair. Not two chairs. You intended that room to be used by me alone, not by both of us and not by our children. Your apartment was filled with plants, yet there is not one plant in this house. Your bedroom was extremely feminine, yet—”
“Plants?” Katie blinked at him, her emotions veering from alarm to mirth. “I didn’t even think of plants! I’ll give you plants for a wedding present!” she decided promptly.
“And will you give me children?” he asked, his face impassive.
“Not,” Katie quipped, “for a wedding present. Think of the gossip!”
Ramon’s gaze swerved from the faint flush on her high cheekbones to the empty wine bottle beside the one he had just opened. “How much of that bottle did you drink?”
“A little more than half,” she declared rather proudly. “Gabriella drank the rest.”
Ramon felt like shaking her. Instead, he walked over to the wide windows at the corner of the kitchen. Tipping his glass up, he drank deeply, then stared out at the panoramic view. “Why do you want to marry me, Katie?”
Katie saw the tension in his shoulders, the tautness in his profile, and desperately tried to keep things light. “Because you’re tall dark and handsome!” she teased.
The brief, sidelong smile he sent her was without humor. “Why else do you want to marry me?”
“Oh, the usual reasons people get married these days,” she joked. “We like the same movies, we—”
“Stop playing games with me!” he snapped. “I asked you why you want to marry me.”
Panic jolted through Katie’s entire nervous system; her heart began to race wildly. “I—” She tried to speak and couldn’t. She knew Ramon wanted her to say she loved him, and that he wanted to hear her make a final, irrevocable commitment to marry him. Katie could do neither. Afraid not to speak, yet unable to say anything that would satisfy him, Katie could only look at him in mute misery.
In the electrified silence that crackled between them, she could feel Ramon mentally withdrawing from her, and when he finally spoke there was a harsh bitter finality in his words that thoroughly alarmed her: “We will not speak of it again,” he said.
In heavy silence they walked back to Gabriella’s. Katie tried to cloak herself in the comforting glow of the wine she had consumed, but she was feeling more apprehensive with every step. Instead of coming in for dinner, Ramon stopped at the front door, briefly touched his lips to her forehead, and said “Good night.”
There was an ominous ring to that, Katie thought. It sounded more like goodbye than good night. “Are—are you coming over to see me before you leave for work in the morning?”
He turned on the step and looked at her, his face utterly unreadable. “I am not going to work tomorrow.”
“Then will I see you after I meet with Padre Gregorio? I thought I’d go over to his house first thing in the morning. Then I was going to go up to the cottage to take care of some things that need to be done.”
“I will find you,” he said.
“Ramon,” she said, afraid to let him leave in this mood, “I don’t think you were very enthusiastic about—about the cottage. Didn’t you like it?”
“I apologize,” he said politely. “You did an excellent job. It suits me perfectly.”
Although he’d put no emphasis on the word me, Katie noticed he avoided using the word us. She didn’t know what to say to him in this distant, coolly courteous mood. She opened the door. “Well, good night.”
Ramon stared at the door she had just closed, while bitterness and pain rose like bile in this throat. He walked aimlessly for hours thinking about the past two days. For two days he had waited for her to say she loved him. He had teased her and laughed with her and made her moan with passion in his arms, but not even in her most heated moment had she responded to his “I love you.” She would kiss him or smile at him, placate him like an infatuated little boy, but she would not say it back.
The moon was high in the sky when he returned to his temporary room in Rafael’s house. He stretched out on the bed and stared at the ceiling. He had asked her for honesty, and she was being honest. She was refusing to claim an emotion that she didn’t feel. It was as simple as that.
God! How could she not love him, when he loved her so damned much.
Katie’s image danced before him: Katie coming up the hill toward him with that graceful leggy walk of hers and the breeze teasing her glorious hair; Katie looking at him, her deep blue eyes sparkling with laughter or dark with concern because he looked tired.
Ramon closed his eyes, trying to postpone the moment when he would have to make a decision, but it was no use. The decision had already been made. He was going to have to send her home. He would send her home tomorrow. No, not tomorrow, the next day. He had to keep her with him one more day . . . and one more night. Just one more. One more day to watch her moving around the cottage, to memorize the way she looked in each room—so that he could remember her there when she was gone. One more night to make love to her in the bedroom she had decorated for him, to join his ravenous body with hers and lose himself in her. He would lavish her senses with every exquisite pleasure a man could give a woman, make her moan with delight and cry out with rapture, and then bring her again and again to shuddering ecstasy.
One day and one night to accumulate memories: memories that would bring him as much torment as they would pleasure, but it didn’t matter. He had to have them.
And then he would send her home. She would be relieved, he knew that now. He had always known it. Whatever her reasons for agreeing to marry him had been, she was never entirely committed to the idea. If she were, she would not have decorated her future home as a handsome bachelor retreat without a trace of her own personality.