“Well, that’s their problem, and I’m not going to worry about it — not on a day like this.” She was leaning against the side of the doorway, in profile to him; now she stretched her arms and for a moment stood on tiptoe, her back arched, the leg muscles tensed, her breasts high. “O-oh, it’s been so wonderful out in the sun,” she said as she relaxed. “Why don’t you get into a pair of shorts and we’ll bake in it together? I’m so disgustingly white I can’t bear it.”
Conway dared look at the whiteness for only a moment. “I wonder what the neighbors would think,” he said.
“Oh, the neighbors!” Her nose wrinkled in disgust. “We can’t be seen here on the patio. You and that detective are worse than anybody in Topeka. How about going to the beach, then? I’ve got to wear this outfit sometime.” She tugged at the shorts and covered an additional fraction of an inch of thigh, and laughed. “I got it at a sale last fall. I guess everybody else in Topeka had sense enough to know they wouldn’t dare wear it there. So it was the first thing I packed. Do you think it’s too much?”
“There’s certainly not too much of it.”
She laughed again. “All right — I have a bathing suit that’s at least moderately decent. How about the beach?”
Because he found the prospect so inviting, he had to be brutal. “Have you any intention of looking for that apartment, or are you just planning on staying here indefinitely?”
“Sorry,” she said, looking as though he had slapped her. “I’ll get dressed.”
His remorse was genuine as she left the room. He knew that he dared not let himself be ensnared by a pretty face or an alluring figure or the charm she unquestionably possessed. But — could he be wrong? Might she really be as gay and delightful and straightforward as she seemed? He tried to puzzle it out with an aching head, for when she left the room, the intoxication left with her and only the hangover remained.
She was back, dressed for the street, before he had left the table. “If you want to have dinner here tonight, you’d better get some food — there’s hardly anything in the icebox,” she said. “I don’t know what time I’ll be back for my things — if you go out, will you leave the key under the mat, or something?”
Conway realized that she still was feeling the hurt, and was trying to be cold and distant. But she had none of Helen’s steely venom. He wanted to apologize, he wanted to touch her and tell her he was sorry, tell her that he hated to treat her in this fashion, that he was compelled to in self-defense. “I’ll leave the front door on the latch,” was what he said, and she was gone.