Man of Ice by Diana Palmer Read Free Book Online

out of dainty little china cups and saucers.”
    “They also ate cucumber sandwiches,” Corlie returned. “Want a few?”
    Barrie made a face. “I’ll be quiet about the coffee table if you won’t offer me those again.”
    “It’s a deal. Call if you need anything else.” Corlie went out, closing the sliding doors behind her.
    She helped herself to coffee and cake and so did he. As always he took his coffee black while Barrie put cream and sugar in hers.
    “Antonia said that you’d been offered a job heading the math department at your high school next fall,” he remarked. “Are you going to take it?”
    She looked up over the rim of her coffee cup. “I don’t know,” she replied. “I love teaching. But that job is mostly administrative. It would take away the time I had with my students, and plenty of them require extra tutoring.”
    He searched her down-bent face. “You…like children, don’t you?”
    “Oh, yes.” She toyed with her coffee cup, trying not to think about the child they’d made, the one she’d lost so many years ago.
    He sat, waiting, hoping that she might finally decide to tell him her secrets. But the moment passed. She went right on eating cake and drinking coffee, and she didn’t make another remark. He was hesitant about bringing it up himself. They had a long way to go before she might feel comfortable talking about something so intimate and painful with him.
    He changed the subject and conversation reverted to impersonal topics. He went into his study to make some phone calls and she went upstairs to unpack.
    She wondered at the change in him, but she was still too raw from the past to let her guard down.
    Supper was a cheerful affair, with Rodge and Corlie sitting at the table with Barrie and a taciturn Dawson. They talked. He listened. He seemed preoccupied, and he excused himself to work in the study. He didn’t come back, even when Barrie said good-night to Corlie and Rodge and went up to her old room to go to bed.
    She lay awake for a long time. Being in the house again brought back memories, so many memories, of Dawson and his antagonism. Then, inevitably, her mind went to the Riviera….
    It had been a beautiful summer day. Seagulls had dived and pitched above the white beach where Barrie sat on a big beach blanket and worried about her conservative appearance. Many people were nude. Most of the women were topless. Nobody seemed to pay the least attention, either.
    Barrie wanted to sunbathe without white lines, but she was inhibited at twenty-one, and a little intimidated by Dawson in his white trunks. He was exquisite, and she couldn’t keep her eyes off him. A thick thatch of curly gold hair, darker than that on his head, covered his broad chest and narrowed down his flat stomach into his trunks. Long, elegantly powerful legs had the same tan as the rest of his body. She imagined that he normally sunbathed without any trunks at all, although she didn’t know for sure.
    The path of her thoughts embarrassed her and she averted her eyes. But her hands toyed with the ties of her bikini top as she thought daringly how it would be to let it fall, to know that Dawson’s gaze was on her bare breasts. She shivered with just the thought of it, and wished she were sophisticated and chic like his usual companions, that she had the nerve just once to do something outrageous and shocking.
    She’d glanced at him in what might have seemed a coquettish way as her fingers toyed with the straps and she’d smiled nervously.
    Dawson hadn’t realized how inhibited she was. He’d formed the idea that Barrie was a born flirt, that she collected men. He’d always seen her shy attempts at affection as deliberate coquetry, because it was the sort of game the sophisticated women he knew played.
    So when Barrie had darted that curious glance at him, he’d thought she wanted him to coax her into taking off the top. And because she had a lovely young body, and he wanted very much to look at