Confessions: He's The Rich Boy / He's My Soldier Boy

He was already lowering himself to his knees, kissing her chin and neck, drawing her down and slowly dragging his wet tongue down her breasts as thunder cracked loudly through the hills. As they kneeled in the pooling moonlight, he cupped her breast and placed his mouth around the nipple. Slowly he drew on the dark bud, and Nadine shuddered to her very core.

“Is this what you want?” he asked.

“Mmm.” She couldn’t think or answer.

“Oh, Nadine.” Every muscle in his body went rigid and he drew in a long, ragged breath. His arms surrounded her again and he held her close, resting his chin upon her head. “I think we’d better take this slow...or at least slower. If it’s possible.” He found her T-shirt and tossed it to her. “Take me for a ride...in your boat.”

“My brother’s boat,” she corrected, feeling slightly wounded. Had she done something wrong? True, she didn’t know much about satisfying a man or even turning one on, but she’d thought, from Hayden’s response and her own, that everything was right.

She fumbled with her T-shirt, then waded to Ben’s boat. Hayden helped her guide the craft to the open water, and once in the middle of the lake, he reached over, turned off the ignition switch and let the boat drift. They kissed in the rain, lips touching as lightning sizzled through the air.

Throwing his jacket over her shoulders, he said, “We’ve got to get home. This isn’t safe.”

“I don’t care—”

“You will.” He guided the boat to the landing and cut the engine again. Helping her out of the boat, he slung an arm around her shoulders. As they walked to the county road, he shoved a lock of wet hair from her cheek. “Aren’t you going to ask me about Wynona?”

“Do you want to talk about her?”

“Not particularly.”

Nadine wasn’t sure she wanted to hear about the other girls in his life and yet she was curious, about everything that touched him. Especially the women.

“She’s the one my parents have chosen to be my wife.”

Nadine’s heart did a free-fall and hit rock bottom. “Your wife?” She was suddenly sick inside. He was going to marry someone else? Oh, God, how could she have behaved as she did? How could he have nearly made love to her?

“That’s what the old man wants. That’s what the car was all about. He gave me the Mercedes as an ‘engagement present.’ Trouble is, I’m not engaged.”

“Yet.”

He touched her arm. “Ever. At least not to Wynona.”

“She’s pretty.”

He snorted. “Do you think so?”

“Mmm.” She shivered. What was she doing out here alone with him discussing the physical attributes of the woman he was supposed to marry?

“Well, so does she.”

“Does...does she think you’re getting married?”

He scowled. “It’s hard to know what Wynona thinks, but I have a feeling that she’d do just about anything to get a piece of the old man’s fortune. Marrying me would be the easy way.”

Nadine’s heart shattered into a million pieces. Hayden talked about marriage as if it were a prize with which to bargain. She considered her parents’ union and knew that wedded bliss was something straight out of fairy tales. Yet she was enough of a romantic to believe that somewhere true love had to exist. It just had to!

She thought of Hayden kissing Wynona, touching her as he’d caressed Nadine, and her stomach roiled painfully. A question loomed between them and she told herself not to ask it, yet she had to know the truth. “You said you weren’t a virgin.”

He didn’t respond.

“Have you...did you...with Wynona?”

Clearing his throat, he grabbed her arm, causing her to stop walking. “Never.”

“But—”

“There was another girl.”

“Trish London,” Nadine guessed.

“So the word got around.” He started walking again, his fingers linked with hers. “Don’t believe everything you hear, Nadine. At least in Gold Creek. People like to stretch the truth.”

She knew instinctively that the subject was closed.

* * *

HAYDEN WALKED HER home. Over her protests, he insisted on seeing that she was safely on her back porch where he kissed her gently, then jogged back toward the road. She watched until he disappeared into the night. After assuring herself that he was really gone, she ran through the drizzle to the tree and climbed to the branch near her window. Carefully, so as not to make any noise, she slipped over the ledge and landed softly on the bare floor.

Letting out her breath, she began yanking off her soaked Nikes, but stopped short when she heard the click of a lighter and watched in horror as her mother, leaning against the bureau, lit a cigarette. The tiny flame gave Donna’s face a yellow, haggard appearance, and her lips were pulled into a deep frown as she drew in on the first smoke she’d inhaled in over five years.

Nadine’s heart nearly stopped. She was caught. There was no way around it.

“Want to tell me where you’ve been?” Donna asked, white smoke drifting from her mouth and nostrils as she clicked the lighter shut.

“At the lake.”

“With?”

“I went by myself,” Nadine said, sidestepping the lie.

“What did you do there?”

“Took a ride in Ben’s boat.”

“Hmm.” Another long, lung-burning drag on the cigarette. The tip glowed red, the only light in the room. The smell of burning tobacco mixed with rainwater. “Where?”

Shrugging, Nadine replied, “I just drove it around.”

“Alone?”

Obviously her mother didn’t believe her. “I...I overheard you and Dad. The fight. I...I had to get out.” Nadine tossed her sodden hair over her shoulders.

“So you walked nearly two miles in the middle of a thunderstorm and then spent the next three hours cruising around Whitefire Lake in the dark. Is that what you expect me to believe?”

“Yes.”

Sighing, her mother rested her forehead in her hand. “Of all my children, Nadine, you’ve given me the least amount of grief. Kevin...well, he’s got his problems. When he couldn’t play basketball anymore, he quit school and checked out—thought his life was over and took a job at that damned mill. As for Ben...we all know what a hothead he is. He thinks all problems can be solved with his fists or...in the case of girls, by opening his fly.” At Nadine’s swift intake of breath, she added, “I hate to admit it, but Ben’s girl-crazy. As for you... Oh, Nadine...” Her voice trailed off and she drew long on her cigarette again.