An Emergence of Green Read Free Page B

was pleased.
    Who could ask for more, he thought a few minutes later as he stroked her, his hands light on her throat and shoulders. Her mouth was tender, responsive, and tasted of mint toothpaste. He held her on him to run his hands down her back. Her hair, heavy textured silk, lay over his neck and shoulders. He turned her.
    Afterward he lay with his face buried in her hair, breathing the sensual fragrance. Her breathing was shallow, rapid; she was stroking his hair, kissing his face, murmuring indecipherably. He raised his head and looked at her. As always after this ultimate intimacy she gazed back out of veiled, impenetrable eyes, maddening in their privacy.
    He rolled carefully from her, gathering her into his arms. Yes, he reassured himself, he was good for her; he knew that from how she was when he was inside her. He did make her happy.
    “I love you, Princess,” he murmured sleepily, nuzzling her, her delicate fingers soothing on the back of his neck. His contentment was disturbed by the knowledge that tomorrow morning she would rise several hours before he did, and tomorrow night she would begin going to bed early as well. But not for long; he would simply wage guerrilla warfare until she quit that stupid job for one with regular hours. Other men might want novelty in their lives, but he did not. He wanted only her. All the change and challenge he needed he could find in his work. He would soon have her in his bed when he wanted her there, just as he had for the past eight years.
    Like a warm shroud, sleep descended.

Chapter 4

    Stealthily, Carolyn rose. She closed the bathroom door before turning on the light, and with swift automatic skill administered a douche, absently considering that she had not mentioned to Paul the extraordinary presence of Val Hunter in their pool. There was no reason to mention it—no reason to further upset him. She tossed the empty disposable douche into the wastebasket and turned out the light.
    She curled up close to him, against the solid comforting breadth of his back, feeling vague arousal as she sometimes did after they had made love. His unhappiness over her work hours could not continue, she decided. A two week trial—then if he was still unhappy she would have to quit.
    Quit , she thought wrenchingly. Maybe he would come around...

    ***

    Four-fifteen. She looked at the digital clock with a surge of gladness. She did not have to get ready for work till four-thirty; she would spend this extra fifteen minutes dawdling over coffee and the paper. Paul muttered a sound of protest as she took her warmth from him, then rolled over and sank back into sleep.
    The coffeepot was attached to a timer set for seven o’clock when Paul got up. She drank instant coffee and gazed at the darkened shadows of the house in contentment, leafing through the Times that had arrived faithfully at some mysterious earlier hour.
    At five-twenty she let herself out of the house, pulling a sweater around her shoulders. An awakening pale light, concealing any threat of heat, lay over the Valley, over the joggers androgynous in their sweatsuits in the misty overcast. She drove the Sunbird slowly down Verdugo Road, loving the empty streets, the silence.

    That afternoon she arrived home after work wilted by the brief walk to her car in the supermarket parking lot, depressed by reports on the radio of brush fires and first-stage smog alerts. The heat that had arrived that week had settled in, rising in waves from roof and pavement, creating erratic winds that scoured the tinder-dry hills.
    She was surprised to hear the sounds from the pool. It was too hot, she thought, to move, much less swim, and the pool would be dirty from the wind, from the ash of fires on the nearby hills.
    She drew the drapes aside. The pool looked clean enough; bare of twigs and leaves, but of course Val Hunter was every bit as capable as Paul of handling a skimmer. Carolyn watched her swim, a simple crawl stroke, the head position