Snowflakes on the Sea

Mallory sighed. She loved Nathan McKendrick with an intensity that had never abated in six tumultuous years of marriage, though she couldn’t have honestly said that she was happy. At twenty-seven, she was successful in her out-of-the-blue career, and Nathan, at thirty-four, was certainly successful in his. But there were elements missing from their relationship that caused Mallory to hunger even in the midst of opulence.

Money and recognition were pitiable substitutes for children, and the hectic pace most people considered glamorous only made Mallory’s heart cry out for simplicity and peace.

Outside, in the silent storm, Mallory’s Irish Setter, Cinnamon, began to howl for admission. Mallory smiled and went out onto the screened sun porch to welcome her furry and much-missed friend.

Cinnamon whimpered and squirmed in unabashed delight as Mallory greeted her with a pat on the head. “What do you say we just hide out here from now on, girl?” Mallory asked, only half in jest. “Nathan could go on with his concert tours—the darling of millions—and we’d exist on a diet of oysters and clams and wild blackberries.”

The dog abandoned its mistress to sniff and paw at a large, unopened sack of dog food leaning against the inside wall of the porch beside the screen door. Mallory began to pry at the stubborn stitching sealing the bag. “So much for living off the land,” she muttered.

While Cinnamon crunched happily away on the dried morsels wrested from that recalcitrant bag, Mallory heated canned chicken soup on the cookstove. There was very little in the house to eat, but shopping could wait until morning—Mallory would get her car out of the locked garage then, and drive to the small store on the other side of the island.

The wooden telephone on the kitchen wall, actually a modern replica of the old-fashioned crank phone, rang in pleasant tones, and Mallory left the soup simmering on the stove to answer. When she and Pat had arrived, there hadn’t been any phone service at all.

“Hello?”

Pleased feminine laughter sounded on the other end of the crackling line. “Mall, you are back!” cried Trish Demming, one of Mallory’s closest friends. “Thank heaven. I thought I’d fallen short in my dog-watching duties—I called Cinnamon until I was hoarse.”

Mallory smiled. “She’s here, Trish—safe and sound. I tried to call you, but the lines were dead.”

Trish’s voice was warm. “No problem. Actually, I should have looked at your house in the first place. Even when you’re gone, Cinnamon is always dashing over there. What’s going on, anyway? I thought you were all involved in taping that soap—er—daytime drama of yours, Mall.”

Mallory sighed. “I’m having an enforced vacation, Trish. Brad isn’t going to let me back on the set until I have a doctor’s permission.” She didn’t add that she was relieved to have a respite from the crazy schedule; Trish wouldn’t have understood.

There was a short silence while Trish considered the implications of Mallory’s statement. “Honey,” she said finally, concern ringing in her voice, “you’re not sick, are you? I mean, you must be, but is it serious?”

Mallory touched the top of the yellow-enameled wainscoting reaching halfway up the kitchen wall and frowned at the smudge of dust that lingered on her fingertip. “I’m just tired,” she assured her friend, glad that Trish couldn’t see the dark splotches of fatigue under her eyes or the telltale thinness of her already slender figure.

For a while, the two women discussed the plot line of “Tender Days, Savage Nights,” the first soap opera ever to be produced in Seattle. Brad Ranner, the show’s dynamic creator and chief stockholder, had brought it out from New York a year before, partly because of lower production costs and partly because of a desire to use more outdoor scenes. The spectacular vista of sea and mountains and lush woodlands gave the program unique appeal.

Most of the original cast had balked at leaving New York, however, and open auditions had been held in Seattle. On a whim, Mallory had gone, along with a horde of other applicants, to read for a part. Anxious to accomplish something strictly on her own, she had given her maiden name and prayed that no one would recognize her as the wife of a world famous rock singer.

No one had, and furthermore, Mallory had been selected, despite an embarrassing lack of acting experience, to play the role of Tracy Ballard, a troubled young woman who devoted boundless energy to destroying long-term marriages. The part had been a small one at first, but Mallory had played it with a verve that pleased sponsors and viewers alike. Her character on the show took on interesting dimensions, and suddenly, Mallory O’Connor McKendrick was a success in her own right.

And how empty it was.

She promised to visit Trish soon and rang off, frowning. Her hand lingered for a moment on the telephone receiver. Mallory was rich now and, in her own way, even famous, if “famous” was the proper word for a notoriety that caused strange women to confront her in supermarkets and department stores and even libraries, demanding that she stop interfering in this or that fictional marriage.

Nibbling at her lukewarm soup, Mallory considered her life and, for perhaps the ten-thousandth time, wished that it could all be different. Her hard-won teaching certificate had never seen a day’s use, and she longed for a child of her own to love and nurture.

She was rinsing out her empty bowl and placing it in the orange plastic drainer beside the sink when a pair of headlights swung into the yard, their golden light speckled with glistening flakes of snow. Mallory leaned close to the cool, damp window, trying to recognize the car.

When that proved impossible due to the storm, she ran her hands down the worn red-and-blue-plaid flannel of her shirtfront and hurried out onto the screened porch. Cinnamon danced at her heels and then wriggled gleefully against the legs of her jeans.

The slam of a car door echoed, mingling with the nightsong of the tide, and Cinnamon’s magnificent tawny head shot up, suddenly alert. Before Mallory could grasp her collar, the dog propelled herself through the outside screen door and bounded into the ever-deepening snow, yipping hysterically.

Nathan laughed and reached down to greet Cinnamon with the customary pat-and-rub motion that made her ears flop about in comical disarray. “Hello, you worthless mutt,” he said.

Mallory stood in the doorway, her mouth open, just staring. Would she never get over feeling as though she’d just been punched in the solar plexis whenever Nathan McKendrick came striding back into her life?

Standing in the stream of light coming from the kitchen, Nathan forgot the dog and raised his eyes to Mallory. They made their way over her trim, rounded hips, her small waistline, her high, firm breasts to settle at last on her face.

Mallory fell against the doorframe, watching him in stricken silence. Snow glistened in his unruly ebony hair and on the straining shoulders of his jacket, and he put his hands onto his narrow, powerful hips and stared back.

There was a charged silence between them for a long moment, threatening to melt the snow and raise steam from the buried earth. Mallory’s traitorous heart caught in her throat. She’d known that he would come, known that Pat, ever the loyal sister, would contact him, alert him to the fact that his wife had been hospitalized. And yet she had hoped for more time, even as she had longed to be near him again.

Nathan executed a mocking bow. “Good evening—Ms. O’Connor,” he said in a sardonic drawl.

As quickly as that, the strange spell was broken. Mallory lifted her chin in answer to his challenge and replied, “Good evening, Mr. McKendrick.”

Nathan’s jawline tightened with immediate annoyance, and some unreadable emotion glittered in his dark eyes as he strode toward her. Before Mallory could move, he had lifted her out of the doorway and over the two snow-laden steps beneath it.

Her insides rioted with involuntary need as he held her, suspended, his face between her ripe, inviting breasts. Even through the heavy flannel of her shirt, she could feel the warmth of his breath.

Slowly, he lowered her, so that the throbbing fullness of her chest was crushed against the hard expanse of his own. Then, his hands cupping the roundness of her bottom, he pressed her to him, to the ready demand of his manhood and the granitelike wall of his thighs.

Good Lord, Mallory thought with remorse. I’m as bad as any groupie—if he wanted to take me right here in the snow, I’d let him!

Nathan must have known what havoc he was wreaking on her straining senses, but he said nothing. His mouth came down on hers in a kiss that was at once gentle and demanding. Deftly, his lips parted hers for the sweet invasion and searing exploration of his tongue. Mallory responded with hungry abandon, shivering violently in the force of her need.

Then suddenly, Nathan was thrusting her away, holding her at arm’s length. His eyes glowed as they touched her lips and trailed, like the touch of a warm finger, to the pulsing hollow at the base of her throat. He turned her around and propelled her toward the house.

Mallory’s face was hot as she turned to watch her husband enter behind her, Cinnamon rollicking exuberantly at his side.

Nathan closed the door quietly, his eyes working their singular magic again as they moved idly over Mallory’s body, assessing her, stirring primitive reactions as they passed. “I’ve missed you, lady,” he said in a low voice.

Crimson color stained Mallory’s cheeks, and her pride caused her to thrust her head back, so that her dark taffy hair flew over her shoulders in glossy profusion. Her round, thickly lashed eyes flashed with sea green fury born of his ability to inflame her so easily, and she did her best to scowl.

He laughed. “You are an actress, pumpkin,” he allowed, approaching her slowly. One of Nathan’s hands cupped Mallory’s breast, the thumb stroking the bare nipple beneath her old shirt to hard and undeniable response. “Your body betrays you,” he said hoarsely. “You don’t hate me nearly as much as you’d like me to believe.”

Of course I don’t hate you! Mallory wanted to scream, but her pride wouldn’t allow that, so she lifted her chin in stubborn, wordless defiance. But a small cry escaped her as Nathan’s hand released her breast to undo one of her shirt buttons, and then another. Her entire body pinkened as he bared the rounded sweetness of her to his lazy inspection.

Mallory abandoned her act when her husband lowered his lips to one waiting nipple to nip at it, ever so gently, with his teeth. She moaned aloud and arched her back slightly so that he could feast upon her.

He chuckled in gruff triumph and flicked the rosy, pulsing center of her breast with the tip of his tongue, teasing. His hand slid between Mallory’s legs to caress the taut, womanly secrets of her inner thighs.

“Bastard,” she whispered, but there was a catch in her voice and a caress in the word itself. Her hands entangled themselves, without conscious instruction from Mallory, in the thick richness of his dark hair, pressing him closer. With sudden hunger, he devoured the freely offered breast, answering Mallory’s groan of ancient pleasure with one of his own.

Presently, he turned to sample the other breast, again teasing and nibbling, again driving Mallory nearly insane with the need of him. She would not beg him—she would not—but even as she made this decision, desperate pleas were aching in her throat.

At last, Nathan pressed her against the wainscoting lining the wall, and the lean, inescapable hardness of his body joining hers revealed the force of his desire. He stood back only long enough to divest Mallory of her flannel shirt and kiss her flat, soft stomach in a tantalizing promise of further kisses that would drive her beyond passion into the paradise they had visited so many times.

He unsnapped her jeans, and she felt the zipper give way, the fabric slide down over her hips. She shivered as her panties, too, were lowered. Lips parted, she awaited loving that always bordered on the deliciously unendurable.

Nathan nuzzled the silken shelter of her womanhood; the warm promise of his breath and his searching lips made her tremble. One plea broke past her resolve, and it took the shape of his name.

Slowly, he revealed the small, yearning nubbin. In desperation, Mallory caught his head in both hands and thrust him to her. “Oh, God,” she breathed, mindless now in her wanting. “Oh, God, Nathan, please—”

At the invitation he had purposely forced from her, Nathan partook hungrily of her, and his tender greed brought her to swift and searing release. She shuddered reflexively, her fingers moving in his hair, and moaned as he nibbled at her at his leisure, demanding a fiery encore to the performance just past.