LITMIR.BIZ

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only half-alive. Then one day in the canteen I saw you laugh out loud at something someone had said, and that’s when I knew I wanted to go to bed with you. The difference was as day to night.”

      “You see me as a challenge, in other words,” he said drily.

      “I am not promiscuous,” she said, and put down her glass.

      “I never thought you were,” Troy responded, and realized it for the truth. Her offer was, in its way, as flattering as that from the institute in Arizona.

      Lucy might not want him, but other people did, he thought with sudden underlying fury, and drained his own glass. “Let me drive you to your car, then I can follow you to your apartment.”

      Fifteen minutes later he was standing in Martine’s living-room. It exhibited the same cool, uncluttered elegance as the woman herself, although the great jug of vivid silk peonies in one corner hinted at climes other than coolness. She had poured him a drink and then excused herself; he took a big gulp of an exquisitely smooth malt whiskey, and wished he didn’t feel so much like a teenager on his first date.

      The room was warm. He took off his jacket and loosened his tie, and prowled around looking at the serigraphs on the pale pink walls and the books on the shelves—all of which demonstrated a taste both individualistic and eclectic. Why, then, did he feel so hollow inside?

      From behind him Martine said lightly, “Have you read the latest Atwood? I always buy her books in hardcover because I can’t wait for the paperback.”

      He hadn’t come here to talk about Canadian literature. Troy turned around. She had shed the linen dress in favor of a flowing black jumpsuit that revealed her creamy shoulders and clung to her hips. In the soft light of the single lamp her eyes and her hair also looked black. He said flatly, “Where’s your bedroom?” and pulled off his tie, flinging it on the plump leather couch.

      Her lashes flickered. “This way,” she said.

      She had lit a candle on either side of the wide bed, and had pulled back the covers. The room looked like a stage set, Troy thought. Seduction Scene—take one. He began unbuttoning his shirt with furious haste.

      Martine murmured, “There’s no hurry; we have all night.”

      “I haven’t been with anyone except my wife since the day I met her,” Troy said, noticing with a distant part of his mind how he was avoiding the use of Lucy’s name in this room.

      “Ah…then I am flattered.”

      He didn’t like Martine using the same word he had used in his thoughts. Quit thinking, for God’s sake, he told himself. This isn’t about your brain, it’s about your genitals. You’re going to break out of the cage you’ve been in for what seems like forever. So get on with it.

      As he hauled his shirt out of his waistband Martine ran her fingers up his chest and raised her face for his kiss. Without finesse he pulled her close to his body and began kissing her—hard, almost angry kisses. With one hand he stroked her hair—its smoothness another shock—and with the other found the rise of her breast under the sensuous black fabric.

      And somehow, in the confusion of desperation, incipient desire and raw novelty that was tumbling through his brain and his body, Troy knew that he had expected to find the full curve of Lucy’s breast—so familiar, so desirable—not the small, firm peak of another woman’s. A woman who was a stranger to him.

      A woman who wasn’t Lucy.

      His hand felt like a lump of ice. Or was it his heart that felt that way? With an inarticulate groan he pulled his mouth free, let go of Martine and sat down hard on the corner of the bed, running his fingers through his hair and realizing dimly that the harsh breathing he was hearing was his own.

      Resting his hands on his thighs, because his fingers were trembling and he didn’t want Martine to see that, he said hoarsely, “I’m sorry…more sorry than I can say. I can’t make love with you, Martine. I just…can’t.”

      “You’re still in love with your wife.”

      He glanced up. Her voice had been level, her face was expressionless, and he had no idea what she was thinking or feeling. Both were well hidden, he thought, with a stab of entirely irrational rage. “I don’t know the answer to that. If I am, I’m a damn fool.”

      “What is her name?”

      “You mean no one’s told you about her?”

      “I endeavor not to listen to gossip,” Martine said coolly, crossing her arms over her chest. “I only asked about your marital status for my own protection.”

      “Her name’s Lucy.”

      “Why did she leave you? Because I am presuming the separation wasn’t of your choice.”

      “You got that right,” Troy said, more bitterly than he’d intended, reaching for his shirt where it had fallen on the carpet and shrugging into it. He hated talking about Lucy, but he owed Martine, minimally, the decency of an explanation. “Can we go back into the living-room?”

      “Better than that. We will go to the kitchen and I will make an omelette,” Martine said composedly.

      For the first time since he had entered the apartment, Troy really looked at her. “You’re not surprised by what happened,” he said slowly. “Or rather, didn’t happen.”

      “No. But I thought you worth the risk.”

      “Playing games with me, Martine?”

      She gave a very Gallic shrug. “Wanting you in my bed-that’s all.”

      Discovering that he thoroughly disliked someone else anticipating his reactions before he knew them himself, Troy said, “Why weren’t you surprised?”

      “Not long ago I overheard three of the nurses in the laser clinic bemoaning the fact that you never dated anyone. Since I saw no overt signs that you were homosexual, I could only assume you didn’t feel yourself to be free.”

      He had been more than competently diagnosed; trying to shrug off his distaste, both for Martine’s objectivity and her accuracy, he said, “I can’t believe you want me so badly that you’d risk the kind of rejection I just subjected you to—and no, I’m not fishing for compliments.”

      “Then you’ll get none.” She widened her dark eyes. “A Spanish omelette?” she asked.

      “To really put the lid on my lack of romantic sensibility, I’m extremely hungry,” Troy said in faint surprise. “Why don’t we blow our cholesterol counts and make it a six-egg omelette?”

      “Four,” she said, leading him into a kitchen that looked dauntingly efficient. “Three for you and one for me.” Opening the massive refrigerator, she put red and green peppers and a bunch of green onions on the counter. “You may chop these. Very fine.”

      Obediently Troy did as he was told. As the small heap of red and green cubes accumulated he heard himself say, “I was offered a job today in Arizona.”

      “Ah? Tell me about it.” After he had given her the details, she said, “And will you take it?”

      “I plan to go down and check it out.”

      “So is this another rejection?”

      The oversize apron she had tied round her waist made her look more human, more approachable. He put the knife down and said straightforwardly, “Martine, it’s clear to me—and must be to you as well—that I’m not ready for an affair. Serious or otherwise. Nor do I really want to bare my soul and tell you all about the breakdown of my marriage.”

      Moodily he pulled at the rubber bands from the bunch of onions. “I need to get away. Out of Vancouver. Away from nurses who think I should be dating—away from everyone who knew Lucy and me as a couple in the days when I was happy…I need a new start. And Arizona might very well give me that.”

      “You’d

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