After Midnight

He could imagine in what kind of house she normally lived. He hadn’t seen her in anything so far that didn’t look as if she’d found it in a yard sale. He felt vaguely sorry for her. She had no one of her own except her indifferent lover, and her material possessions were obviously very few. He’d noticed that she drove a very dilapidated red MG Midget, the model that was popular back in the 60s.

“Feel like a cup of coffee?” he asked, nodding toward a small fast-food joint near the beach, with tables outside covered by faded yellow umbrellas.

“Yes, I do, thanks,” she told him.

He parked the jeep and they got out. Nikki strolled to the beachside table and sat down while Kane ordered coffee. He hadn’t needed to be told how Nikki took hers. He brought it with cream and sugar, smiling mischievously at her surprise.

“I have a more or less photographic memory,” he told her as he slid onto the seat across from her.

“I’ll remember that,” she said with a grin.

He lifted his head and closed his eyes, letting the sea breeze drift over his darkly tanned face. It had a faintly leonine look, broad and definite, with a straight nose that was just short of oversized, a jutting brow with thick eyebrows, and a wide, thin-lipped mouth that managed to be sexy and masculine all at once. His eyes were large and brown, his pupils edged in black. They were staring at her with faint amusement.

“You look Spanish,” she blurted out, embarrassed at having been caught looking at him.

He frowned slightly, smiling. “My great-grandmother was a highborn Spanish lady,” he replied. “She was visiting relatives near San Antonio, where my great-grandfather was a ranch foreman. As the story goes, they were married five days after they met, leaving a raging scandal behind them when they moved to Houston to prospect for oil.”

“How interesting! And did they find any?”

“My great-grandfather was prospecting up around Beaumont when Spindletop blew its stack in 1901,” he told her. “He made and lost a fortune in two months’ time.” He didn’t add that his great-grandfather had quickly recouped his losses and went on to found an oil company.

“Poor man.” She looked up from the coffee she was sipping. “His wife didn’t leave him because he lost everything, did she?”

“She wasn’t the type. She stuck by him, all the way.”

“That doesn’t happen very often anymore, does it? Women sticking by men, I mean,” she added wistfully. “Now, marriages are expendable. Nobody does it for keeps.”

He scowled. “You’re very cynical for someone so young.”

“I’m twenty-five,” she told him. “Not young at all for this day and age.” She studied her brightly polished fingernails, curled around the foam cup. “For the rest, it’s a cynical world. Profit even takes precedence over human life. I’m told that in the Amazon jungles, they kill the natives without compunction to get them off land the government wants to let big international corporations develop.”

He stared at her. “Do you really think that with all the people this planet has to support, we can afford to allow primitive cultures to sit on that much arable land?”

Her green eyes began to glitter. “I think that if we develop all the arable land, we’re going to have to eat concrete and steel a few years down the line.”

He was delighted. Absolutely delighted. For all her beauty, there was a brain under that black hair. He moved his coffee cup around on the scarred surface of the table and smiled at her. “Progress costs,” he countered.

“It’s going to cost us the planet at the rate we’re destroying our natural resources,” she said sweetly. “Or aren’t you aware that about one percent of us is feeding the other ninety-nine percent? You have to have flat, rich land to plant on. Unfortunately the same sort of land that is best suited to agriculture is also best suited to building sites.”

“On the other hand,” he pointed out, “without jobs, people won’t be able to afford seed to plant. A new business means new jobs, a better standard of living for the people in the community. Better nutrition for nursing mothers, for young children.”

“That’s all true,” she agreed, leaning forward earnestly. “But what about the price people pay for that better standard of living? When farm mechanization came along, farmers had to grow more food in order to afford the equipment to make planting and harvesting less time-consuming. That raised the price of food. The pesticides and fertilizers they had to use, to increase production, caused the toxic byproducts to leach into the ground, and pollute the water table. We produced more food, surely, but the more food you raise, the more the population grows. That increases the amount of food you have to raise to feed the increasing numbers of people! It’s a vicious circle.”

“My God, you talk like an economist,” he said.

“Why not? I studied it in college.”

“Well, well.” He grinned at her. “What did you take your degree in?”

“I didn’t finish,” she said sadly. “I dropped out after three and a half years, totally burned out. I’ll go back and finish one day, though. I only lack two semesters having enough units to graduate, with a major in history and a minor in sociology.”

“God help the world when you get out,” he murmured. “You could go into politics with a brain like yours.”

She was flattered and amused, but she didn’t let him see the latter. He mustn’t know how wrapped up she already was in politics.

“You’re not bad yourself.”

“I took my degree in business administration,” he said. “I did a double minor in economics and marketing.”

“Do you work in business?” she asked with deliberate innocence.

“You might say so,” he said carelessly. “I’m in marketing.”

“It must be exciting.”

“Sometimes,” he dodged. He finished his coffee. “Do you like to walk on the beach?” he asked. “I enjoy it early in the morning and late in the afternoon. It helps me clear my mind so that I can think.”

“Me, too,” she said.

“Kindred spirits,” he said almost to himself, and she smiled.

He put the garbage in the receptacle and impulsively slid his hand into Nikki’s.

It was the first deliberate physical contact between them, and sparks flew as his big, strong fingers linked sensuously between her slender ones. She felt their warm touch and tingles worked all the way down her body. She hadn’t felt that way in years. Not since Mosby…

She caught her breath and looked up at him with something like panic in her green eyes.

“What is it, Nikki?” he asked gently.

His deep voice stirred her even more than the touch of his hand. She felt him, as if they were standing locked together. Her eyes looked into his and she could almost taste him.

“Nothing,” she choked after a minute. She pulled her fingers from his grasp firmly, but hesitantly. “Shall we go?”

He watched her move off ahead of him, her hands suddenly in her pockets, the small fanny pack around her waist drooping over one rounded hip. She looked frightened. That was an odd sort of behavior from a woman who’d let him share her home for a night, he thought idly. She hadn’t been afraid of him then.

She paused when he caught up with her, feeling guilty and not quite herself. She looked up at him with a rueful, embarrassed smile.

“I don’t trust men, as a rule,” she confessed. “Most of them have one major objective when they start paying attention to a woman. I’ve never been accused of misleading anyone. That’s why I’m going to tell you right now, and up front, that I don’t sleep around, ever.”

“At least you’re honest,” he said as they continued to walk toward the beach.

“Always,” she assured him. “I find it’s the best policy.”

“Do you sleep with the man who owns the beach house?”

“What I do with him is none of your business,” she said simply.

“Fair enough.” He put his hands in his pockets and looked down at her while they strolled along the white sand. Whitecaps rolled, foaming onto the nearby shore, and above head the seagulls danced on the wind with black-tipped white wings spread to the sun.