Tender Triumph, Page 5

  "I do not think that would be wise," he said sar­donically. "Being seen with me could cause you embarrassment in front of your 'successful, socially acceptable' friends."

  Katie gazed over her shoulder at the tall man who was now looking down his aristocratic nose at her, his hard eyes ironic and disdainful. She sighed. "Ramon, just because I sounded like a conceited ass, doesn't mean that you have to sound like one, too. Please come down to the pool with me?"

  Laughter flickered across his features as he gazed

  at her. Wordlessly, he reached over her shoulder and pushed the door open for her.

  The olympic-size swimming pool was a scene of total chaos, as Katie knew it would be. Four sepa­rate games of water polo were under way with all in attendance yelling and splashing. Girls in bikinis and men in brief swimming trunks were sprawled on towels and chaise lounges, their bodies slick with suntan lotion, toasting in the sun. Beer cans and portable radios were everywhere, and music was blaring over the clubhouse speakers.

  Katie walked over to a nearby umbrella table and pulled out an aluminum chair. "What do you think of opening day at an American swimming pool?" she asked Ramon as he sat down beside her.

  His enigmatic gaze swept the colorful pandemoni­um. "Interesting."

  "Hi, Katie," Karen called, emerging from the pool like a graceful mermaid, her voluptuous body shining with rivulets of water. As usual, Karen was accompanied by at least two devoted males, who padded dripping beside her over to Katie and Ra­mon.

  "You know Don and Brad don't you?" Karen said, with a perfunctory nod at the two men who were also tenants in the apartment complex. Katie knew them both almost as well as Karen did, so she was a little surprised, but then, as she soon realized, Karen didn't really care who knew whom, so long as she was introduced to Ramon.

  With unaccountable reluctance, Katie performed the introductions. She tried not to notice the warm appreciation in Ramon's flashing white smile when he was presented to Karen, and the answering spar­kle in Karen's green eyes as she extended her hand to him.

  "Why don't you two change clothes and come back out and swim?" Karen invited, without taking her eyes off Ramon. "There's going to be a big party here at sundown. You should stay for that, too."

  "Ramon doesn't have any swimming trunks with him," Katie quickly declined.

  "No problem," the resourceful Karen replied, tearing her eyes from Ramon for the first time since she had climbed out of the pool. "Brad will loan Ramon a pair, won't you, Brad?"

  Brad, who had been in hot pursuit of Karen for nearly a year, looked as if he would rather loan Ramon a one-way ticket out of town, but he politely seconded the offer. And how could he help it? Few men ever wanted to deny Karen anything—her looks promised so much in return. She was the same height as Katie, five feet six, but there was a ripe sexuality about her dark hair and curvaceous body that made her seem like passion fruit ready for the plucking—but only by the man of her choice. The independence that shone in her slanting green eyes made it perfectly clear that she did her own choosing. And from the way Karen was watching Ramon walk away with Brad to change into swim­ming trunks, it was obvious to Katie that Ramon was Karen's choice. "Where,” Karen breathed almost reverently, "did you ever find him? He looks like a Greek Adonis... or was Adonis blond?

  Well, anyway, he looks like a black-haired Greek god."

  Katie resisted the uncharitable impulse to cool Karen's interest in Ramon by informing her that he was a black-haired Spanish farm laborer. "I met him at the Canyon Inn, Friday night," she said in­stead.

  "Really? I didn't see him there, and he'd be al­most impossible to overlook. What does he do, be­side look sexy and gorgeous?"

  "He", Katie hesitated, then to spare Ramon any possible embarrassment, she said, "He's in transportation. Trucking, actually."

  "No kidding?" Karen said unanswerably, giving Katie a searching look. "Is he your private stock or can anyone sample?"

  Katie couldn't help smiling at Karen's bluntness. "Would it matter?"

  "You know it would. We're friends. If you say you want him, I won't take him away."

  The odd thing was, Katie knew she meant it. Karen had personal ethics; she didn't steal her friends' men. Nevertheless, it rankled Katie that Karen automatically assumed she could take Ramon away, unless, out of the spirit of friendship, she chose not to do it. "Help yourself," Katie said with an indifference she didn't entirely feel. "He's all yours if you want him. I'm going to go change into my suit."

  Changing into her bikini in her apartment, Katie was annoyed with herself for not telling Karen to leave Ramon alone. And she was equally annoyed for caring one way or another. She was also a little crushed by the frank admiration she had seen in Ramon's expression when he looked at Karen's lush bikini-clad figure.

  Katie stood in front of the mirror in her bathing suit, critically surveying her appearance. The bright blue bikini revealed a stunning figure in all its glory, from full high breasts, narrow waist and gently curving hips, to long shapely legs. With disgust, Katie thought she must be the only woman alive who could look coolly proper when she was practically naked!

  Men whistled appreciatively at girls like Karen Wilson; they stared in silence at Katie Connelly. The quiet pride in the tilt of her chin and the natural grace with which she moved always made her seem vaguely aloof, and Katie was powerless to change her image, even if she wanted to, which she normal­ly didn't.

  With the exception of singles' bars, Katie was rarely approached by men she didn't know. She didn't look approachable. As a rule, men took one look at her flawless skin and clear blue eyes and saw classic beauty rather than sex appeal. They expected her to be remote, untouchable, and they treated her with restrained admiration. By the time they knew her well enough to realize that she was basically warm and friendly with an irrepressible sense of humor, they also knew her well enough not to press her for more than she was willing to give. They talked with her and laughed with her and asked her for dates, but their sexual overtures were usually verbal rather than physical—softly spoken innuendos that Katie smilingly and pointedly ignored.

  Katie pulled a brush through her tumbling mass of waving hair, gave it a quick shake to restore it to its casual, windblown style, and took a last dissatis­fied look in the mirror.

  When she reached the pool area she found Ramon stretched out on a lounger beside three young women who had spread their towels on the cement pool deck and were sitting there, blatantly flirting with him. Seated at the umbrella table on his other side was Karen, along with Brad and Don.

  "May I join your harem, Ramon?" Katie quipped, standing over him with a faint smile.

  A lazy, devastating grin swept across his tanned face as he looked up at her, then he lithely rolled to his feet, getting up to give her his coveted lounger. Inwardly, Katie sighed. She may as well have come out here in an overcoat. Not once had Ramon's gaze dropped below her neck.

  He sat down at the table with Karen and the other two men.

  Trying to ignore her mixed emotions, Katie began rubbing suntan oil on her leg.

  "I'm very good at that, Katie," Don grinned at her. "Need some help?"

  Katie glanced up with a plucky smile. "My legs aren't that long," she declined. Unlike Brad, Don was not completely obsessed with Karen, and Katie had sensed for the last several months that if she gave him the slightest encouragement, he would easily shift his interest from Karen to herself. She was in the process of spreading the oil onto her left arm when she heard Karen say, "Katie told me that you're in the transportation business, Ramon."

  "Oh, she did, did she?" Ramon drawled with enough sarcasm to make Katie pause and stare at him. He was leaning back in his chair with a thin cigar clamped between his white teeth, his piercing eyes leveled on Katie. Katie flushed and hastily pulled her gaze from his.

  A few moments later, Karen did her utmost to get him to go swimming with her, but was met with a firmly polite refusal.

  "Do you know how to
swim?" Katie asked Ramon when the others had left.

  "Puerto Rico is an island, Katie," he replied dry­ly. "The Atlantic Ocean on one side, and the Carib­bean on the other. There is no shortage of water in which to swim."

  Katie looked at him with a puzzled frown. From the moment he had kissed her in her apartment, a subtle shift in power had been taking place. Until then she had been confident and in control of their relationship. Now she felt confused and strangely vulnerable, while Ramon seemed decisive and self-assured. Shrugging, she said, "I was only going to offer to teach you to swim if you didn't know how. There's no need for you to launch into a lecture on Puerto Rican geography."

  Ignoring her cross tone, he said, "If you wish to swim, we will swim."

  Katie's breath froze as he came to his feet and stood looking down at her in Brad's white swimming trunks. He was six feet three inches of splendid masculinity, wide shouldered and narrow hipped, with the firm muscles of an athlete. His chest was covered with a light furring of black hair, and as Katie arose, she kept her eyes carefully fixed on the silver medallion hanging from a chain around his neck.

  Disconcerted and embarrassed by the way the sight of his bronzed body was affecting her, Katie did not look up at him until she realized that he had no intention of moving out of her way. When she finally dragged her eyes to his, he said softly, "I think you look very nice, too."

  An unbidden smile curved Katie's lips. "I didn't think you noticed," she said as they began walking over to the pool.

  "I did not think you wanted me to look at you."

  "You certainly looked at Karen," Katie heard herself say. She shook her head bemusedly and spoke her next thought aloud as well. "I didn't mean to say that."

  "No," he said with amusement. "I am sure you did not."

  Preferring to forget the whole exchange, Katie stood poised at the deep end of the pool. She dived, cutting the water in a clean, graceful line. Ramon was right beside her, pacing himself to her strong strokes with an effortless ease that Katie had to ad­mire. They swam twenty laps together before Katie let her feet touch bottom. She stood watching Ramon finish ten more laps before she laughingly called, "Show off!"

  Diving neatly, he disappeared from her sight. Katie let out a startled shriek as hands jerked her feet out from under her and hauled her to the bot­tom. When she surfaced she was gasping for air, her eyes stinging from the chlorine. "That," she said with laughing severity as Ramon raked his wet curly hair back and grinned at her, "was a very childish thing to do. Almost as childish as—this!" Slicing her hand at the water, she sent a geyser of it spraying into Ramon's face, then ducked around trying to avoid reprisal. There followed a laughing, dunking, racing session that lasted for fifteen minutes and left her breathless and exhausted.

  Hauling herself over the side of the pool, Katie padded over to the lawn chair and handed Ramon the towel she had brought for him. "You play too rough," she chided him good-naturedly as she bent over and wrung out her long heavy hair.

  His chest heaving from their exertions, Ramon looped the towel around his neck and put his hands on his hips. Quietly, he said, "I would be as gentle with you as you wished me to be."

  Katie turned liquid inside at the meaning she read into his words. Almost certain that he had been referring to making love to her, she flopped down on the lounge on her stomach and laid her head on her arms. Her skin flinched as Ramon drizzled sun-tan oil onto her back, then sat down beside her. She tensed as his hands began slowly stroking up and down her back, rhythmically massaging the oil into her satiny skin. "Shall I unfasten the back?" he asked.

  "Don't even consider trying it," Katie warned. By the time his hands had moved up to her shoulders and his thumbs were circling just below her nape, Katie was breathing in shallow little breaths, and every inch of her skin was vibrantly alive where his hands had touched it.

  "Am I bothering you, Katie?" he asked in a husky whisper.

  "You know you are," Katie murmured lethar­gically, before she could stop herself. She heard his satisfied chuckle and turned her head away from him. "You're doing it on purpose, and it's making me very nervous."

  "In that case, I will let you relax," he said as his weight lifted from her chaise longue. When he was gone, Katie tried not to wonder what he was doing and firmly closed her eyes to the blazing late-afternoon sun.

  Occasionally she heard his deep voice followed by a peal of feminine laughter, or one of the men call­ing something to him. He certainly fit in well here, Katie mused. But then, why shouldn't he, she though dourly. The only requirement for popularity around here with the opposite sex was having an at­tractive body, preferably combined with an attrac­tive face, and if you were a man, a good job. Katie, with her small lie, had provided Ramon with the lat­ter.

  What was the matter with her, Katie wondered drowsily. She had absolutely no reason to complain. Despite her occasional bouts of discontent lately, when her world seemed populated by phony, shallow people, she enjoyed the clever bantering that she exchanged with the confident, self-assured men she knew. She liked having nice clothes, a beautiful apartment, and being the object of so much mascu­line admiration. She genuinely enjoyed men's com­pany even though she carefully avoided becoming intimate with any of them, because Katie's physical desires were never stronger than her overwhelming need to retain what pride and self-respect David had left her.

  Rob would have been the only other man she had ever let make love to her. Luckily she had discovered he was married before she let that happen. The right man would come along someday and she would hold nothing back. The right man, not just any man. Under no circumstances was Katie Connelly going to find herself sitting around the pool or at one of the singles' bars, with three or four men who all had intimate knowledge of her body. It happened to other women all the time, but Katie found the idea degrading and repulsive.

  "Hey, Katie, wake up and roll over," Don com­manded.

  Katie blinked, surprised that she had fallen asleep, and obediently rolled onto her back.

  "It's almost six o'clock. Brad and I are going to get some beer and pizzas for the party tonight. Do you want me to bring anything stronger for you and Ramon?" Was there a sneer in the way he said Ramon's name?

  Katie wrinkled her nose at her grinning admirer. "Stronger than Mama Romano's pizzas? Heaven

  forbid!" She looked around for Ramon and saw him walking toward her with Karen on one side and another woman on the other. Carefully extinguish­ing the ridiculous flare of jealousy she felt, Katie said to Ramon, "There's going to be a party out here tonight—dancing and that kind of thing. Would you like to stay for it?"

  "Of course he would, Katie," Karen said prompt­ly on his behalf.

  "Then it's fine with me," Katie said with a shrug. She would enjoy the party with her friends, and Ramon could enjoy it with Karen and whomever else he chose.

  By nine-thirty that night the food had been de­voured, along with several cases of beer and count­less bottles of liquor. The pool lights were lit, giving the water an iridescent green glow, and someone had put on a disco tape to play over the loudspeakers. Katie, who loved to dance, had been doing so for nearly an hour with assorted partners when she noticed Ramon standing far away from the activity, a solitary figure leaning against the fence that sur­rounded the pool, staring out into the distance. Silhouetted in the night, with his swimming trunks a stark band of white in the inky darkness, he seemed very aloof, and yet, somehow, lonely.

  "Ramon?" Katie said anxiously, coming up be­hind him and putting her hand on his arm. He turned slowly and looked down at her, and she saw the pleasure her touch brought to his smile. Cau­tiously, she removed her hand. "Why are you over here, all by yourself?"

  "I needed to escape from the noise so that I could think. Do you never feel the need to be by your­self?"

  "Yes," she admitted, "but not usually in the mid­dle of a party."

  "We do not have to be here in the middle of a party," he pointed out meaningfully.
>
  Katie's heart gave a funny little lurch, which she steadfastly ignored. "Would you like to dance?"

  He tipped his head in the direction of the Neil Diamond recording that was now blasting over the loudspeakers. "When I dance I like to hold a woman in my arms," he answered. "Besides, I would have to wait in line for the privilege of danc­ing with you."

  "Ramon, do you know how to dance?" Katie persisted, certain that he probably didn't, and about to offer to teach him.

  Flinging his cigar away in a glowing red arc, he said tersely. "Yes, Katie, I know how to dance. I know how to swim. I know how to tie my own shoes. I have a slight accent, which you seem to think means I am backward and ignorant, but which many women find attractive."

  Katie stiffened angrily. Lifting her chin, she stared straight into his eyes and said very quietly and very distinctly, "Go to hell." Intending to walk away, she pivoted on her heel, then gasped in sur­prise as Ramon's hand damped on her arm, jerking her around to face him.

  In a voice vibrating with anger, he said, "Do not ever speak to me that way again, and do not swear. It does not become you."

  "I'll talk to you any way I like," Katie blazed. "And if all the other women find you so damned at­tractive, they're welcome to you!"

  Ramon gazed down into her stormy blue eyes and proudly beautiful face, and a reluctant smile of ad­miration broke across his features. "What a little spitfire you are," he chuckled. "And when you are angry—“

  "I am not a little anything," Katie interrupted hotly. "I am nearly five feet seven inches tall. And if you were about to say that I'm beautiful when I'm angry, I warn you, I'll laugh my sides off. Men al­ways say that to women because they heard it in some ridiculous old movie, and—"

  "Katie," Ramon breathed as his firm, sensual mouth descended to hers, "You are beautiful when you are angry—and if you laugh, I will toss you into the pool."