by Ruby Laska
There could be no place for her in the picture.
Sobered, Amber drove slowly through town, then out on a country road through fields aflame with late afternoon sun, more reluctant than ever to face her errand. The directions scratched on a piece of paper by the motel clerk were simple enough; Mac had chosen to make his home a stone’s throw from Boone Lake, in an area that Amber remembered to be densely wooded, popular with outdoor sportsmen.
The clerk, a man who resembled a boy Amber remembered being several grades behind her at school, had raised a curious eyebrow when she asked about Mac’s address, and she was sure her request was making its way down the gossip chain. At least the clerk had been able to tell her exactly where Mac lived, but then again, that didn’t come as much of a surprise. There was a time when she herself could have directed a stranger to the home of almost any of the town’s residents.
The air rushing in the car’s windows was warm and heavy with moisture, and a bank of inky clouds encroached on the descending sun. A summer storm was on its way. Despite the beads of perspiration forming on her brow and upper lip, Amber wanted to feel the hot, humid air and the approach of the storm. It matched her mood, somehow, the far-off rumbling in the clouds like the emotions tumbling deep inside her.
The difference was that she knew already how the storm would end, a furious downpour slanting through the dusty fields, drenching everything before tapering off to a light rain and finally, in the morning, rising off of everything in a steam perfumed with the promise of new growth.
But it was anyone’s guess what would be the outcome of her reacquaintance with Mac, into which she was driving with a determination heavily tempered by misgivings.
CHAPTER FIVE
Mac pushed the sliced onion and minced garlic around the pan dispiritedly with a wooden spoon. Colorful sliced peppers mounded on a cutting board waited nearby, along with opened bottles of extra-virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
In the early years on his own after Amber left, dinner usually meant a few slices of deli ham on stale white bread, and a couple of beers, eaten standing up at the kitchen counter. The food usually filled his belly, but he barely tasted it, and meals somehow left him feeling just as empty inside as before.
Fourteen years of bachelorhood had taught him a few lessons. One of them was that if no one else is around to make a fuss over you, then you ought to have enough self respect to treat yourself decently.
And that included fixing a proper meal at the end of the day.
Charlene had been glad to help a few years back, when Mac sheepishly drew her aside one day at work and asked her if she had any easy recipes he might be able to learn to make on his own. The next morning she brought him a stack of cookbooks. On top was a children’s cookbook with yellow sticky notes marking several recipes.
“I started Buddy and Louise out on these,” she said, giving him a look full of sisterly concern. “They can both fix anything in the book now.”
The fact that he was outperformed in the kitchen by a nine- and a ten-year-old fueled Mac’s determination, and by the end of the week he’d mastered sloppy joes, jello salad, and tuna casserole.
Within a month he’d worked up to more ambitious fare. With each success his appetite came back a little, and as a sort of graduation exercise he invited Charlene and her family over for dinner. With great care he prepared a meal of pork chops and white bean ragout, a salad of greens and tomatoes from Charlene’s garden, with a layer cake for dessert. He bought a few cookbooks of his own and returned Charlene’s, and the two now routinely traded favorite recipes.
Still, nothing would ever change the fact that a meal with only himself for company could be a pretty lonely affair, no matter what was on the menu. Tonight, especially, Mac felt his solitude acutely. Ever since stomping out of Sheryn’s motel room, Mac had felt a little foolish, both for making presumptions about Amber’s availability and for his reaction to her phone call. Leaving in a squeal of tires had been impetuous and pointless, the reaction of a jealous teenager.
Which, now that he thought about it, was exactly what he felt like.
As distant thunder rumbled, his two beagles flapped their tails against the floor, too lazy and well-fed to even rise from their comfortable spots on the braided rug under the rough-hewn pine table. Their wagging tails seemed to reprimand him for feeling sorry for himself.
“Yeah, all right, you old mutts,” he grumbled back. “I guess you two fleabags are better than nothing.” He took a break from tending the stove to bend and pet them, looping their long, soft ears around his fingers as they rolled their eyes in an ecstasy of affection.
They were good-natured animals, and they’d been with him for ten years. He’d bought them a couple of months after his father passed away, attempting to find a patch for his sense of loss. Originally meant to be hunting dogs, they’d quickly found their place into Mac’s heart and home when he never quite got around to taking up the sport.
Suddenly they both rolled to attention, black-rimmed eyes shining and alert as they sat up. A second later Mac heard it too, a car approaching on the gravel drive leading up to the house. ”Okay, guys, earn your keep,” Mac said. “Go give ‘em hell.”
It was kind of a joke, though he had no one to share it with; the two spoiled beagles were more interested in drowning visitors with affection than with guarding his home. Luckily, no one ever dropped by against whom Mac needed protecting. His friends usually showed up with nothing more sinister on their minds than watching a game and drinking a few beers.
Mac returned to the stove, idly wondering who it was. He tried to remember if there was a game on TV that night, but drew a blank. Oh well, at least he was prepared to feed a crowd. There would be plenty of the pepperonata he was preparing to go over grilled steak sandwiches on his home-made rolls. Icy bottles of ale waited in the fridge, and there were fresh strawberries Mac had picked up at the farm stand.
He turned the heat off after giving the savory dish a final stir. Tossing a handful of dog biscuits out the open back door, he deftly closed it after the dogs loped out to find the treats. Mac had never managed to train the dogs not to run into the road, and a close call with a delivery truck convinced him to fence the back yard to contain them.
He went out the front door to see who’d arrived, just as a bright red Mercedes coupe pulled up in front of the house. Sun glanced off the door, momentarily blinding him with its intensity, and he squeezed his eyes shut.
When he opened them again, Amber was making her way up the steps.
She was the last person he expected. Indulging his misery through the long afternoon, his mood had sunk through feelings of embarrassment to numbed dissatisfaction with himself. He’d done a pretty good job of convincing himself she was swept into the arms of her big-city lover by now, his attentions merely a quickly-forgotten annoyance.
But the shy, tentative smile on her face told him otherwise.
She’d changed into a short red dress, its simple lines doing little to hide the curves underneath. The sweep of red hair framing her face had taken on a bit of a curl in the humidity, and Mac noticed a few wayward strands, some sticking to her neck, some springing disobediently outwards. It was as if her old, impetuous spirit lurked somewhere inside, and was trying to make itself known again.
Enough so, at any rate, that the woman who’d dismissed him so coolly before taking a call from her lover, was now with a few feet of him, and approaching rapidly.
Amber was coming to him. A vague sense of rightness, of homecoming, settled onto Mac, quelling his anxiety. Emboldening him.
As she took the final step without hesitating, Mac did not step aside. Instead he took hold of her shoulders gently, and searched her face intently, not knowing exactly what he expected to find there.
What he saw was not the guilt of a woman leaving behind her lover for a clandestine meeting. Or the challenge of a foe ready to settle an ancient, jealously guarded hurt.
Instead, reflected in h
er eyes was the same brew of emotions he felt himself: longing mixed with regret, a desire to trust tempered by the hard-won wisdom of years.
And then, in the second when he meant to release her, to turn and step aside so she could enter his house, his hands somehow missed the commands from his mind. Even as he tried to release her, the damp warmth of her bare shoulders electrified his fingers. Acting, it seemed, of their own volition, they slowly, softly traveled down the smooth expanse of her arms, lightly caressing the freckled soft skin, finally coming to rest at her hands. His large, work-worn hands folded hers perfectly, two cool treasures which he brought to his lips.
A first kiss in so many years, tender and naive, his lips resting for only the briefest second on her fingers before glancing away.
The second kiss was not nearly so innocent.
Letting go of her hands, he cupped her chin and tilted it so she could not look away.
He mumbled her name before she melted into him and their lips met in a surge of passionate energy.
He had acted without thinking, but even so, he tried to break off the kiss. And could not. When he felt her arms reach around him, tentatively and then grasping his back and pulling him closer to her, so that their bodies met in a smooth curve, he knew he was lost.
Mac burrowed his face into the hollow of her neck, inhaling her scent, a faint groan escaping from deep inside, where desire had been stoked to a full burn. Murmuring her name like a prayer, he ran a hand through her hair, the strands soft and slippery in his fist.
His hand traveled down, over her back, the curve of her waist, coming to rest on the flare of one hip. He pressed her to him, and she met the pressure with her own gentle thrust.
Amber threw her head back and held Mac to her neck, responding with a gasp of pleasure as the stubble of his beard grazed her soft skin. He raised a hand to her throat and let his fingers travel down, grazing, delighting in the touch, tracing a path to her breast.
A slim gold chain caught on a loose thread at her neckline, and as he eased it out of the way he felt the slender circular pendant it held.
Without breaking the embrace he fingered it briefly—and then stopped, recognition blazing through his muddied consciousness.
The ring, the one he’d given her to wear around her neck until they day they married, the day he put it on her finger.
Pulling his body away from hers, he sought her eyes, questioning without words. But Amber moved more quickly. She clapped a hand protectively on the pendant and took a step back.
“Is that—”
Amber said nothing for a moment, her hand rising and falling lightly as it rested against her chest. She stared at a spot near the top button of his shirt. Her shallow breaths and rosy flush gradually faded, and Mac could sense that she was struggling to regain her composure.
“I’m sorry,” she said finally, ignoring his unfinished question. “I shouldn’t have allowed that to happen.”
She touched her throat, pink from contact with the rough surface of his jaw.
“You think it was a mistake, then.” Mac spoke without betraying his emotions. A mistake. The moment that had passed between them had been like a chemical reaction, an explosion in a laboratory when two volatile elements combined. He could no more have stopped himself than he could have sprouted wings and flown, but he could sense already that the wall was back up between them, reinforced by another layer of complications.
Her resolve was no doubt deepened now, as well. Mac cursed himself and put another step between them, so that he was standing in the frame of his front door.
“Of course it was a mistake.” A faint trace of regret tinged Amber’s voice. She stared down at her shoe, a linen espadrille that wasn’t made for country roads. But she didn’t appear to notice the dust marring the fabric.
“I only came here to talk about business. We can do it later. I should go.”
“No.” Mac’s voice was hoarse, and he coughed self-consciously. He wasn’t ready for her to leave. It had begun wrong, all wrong, and he meant to make it right. “I mean, at least have dinner with me. Please. Nothing more.”
Amber followed him into the house, her feet cautious on the wide pine boards. She masked her surging emotions in her careful steps, eyes down on the ground, as her heart slowly stopped pounding.
She should have stayed on the porch, saying what she had to say in that space that was at least somewhat neutral. After the kiss—and she couldn’t allow herself even to think about that—the air had somehow seemed thicker, impenetrable. Mac must have felt it too, because he backed away from her and his expression turned guarded.
But there was, she realized, no neutral territory for the two of them. Sheer proximity caused a reaction, an electricity in the air. It was there, this dangerous attraction, in the cab of his truck. It was there in the clamor and bustle of his shop when she went to visit him. It was there when he showed up in Sheryn’s hotel room, even as she turned away from him and tried to concentrate on Dean’s voice.
Mac turned and offered her a hand. She realized from his concerned expression that he mistook her slow progress for momentary weakness. But rather than accept his hand and his touch a second time, she straightened and took a few firm steps, striding past him and into the heart of his home.
Even though the windows were opened wide to the late afternoon sun and there was no air conditioning, it was much cooler inside. A fan spun lazily in the beamed ceiling high above their heads, sending air currents chasing each other around the room. The walls were solid, built of huge logs the size of a man’s torso. Their color was a rich, warm, honey, and they glowed from a carefully hand-rubbed finish. No attempt was made to hide the knots and imperfections, which were simply finished smooth and left to add their own character to the broad walls.
A house of wood and stone and hard work. It could so easily have been an unwelcoming place, a masculine retreat, like the cover of a hunting and fishing magazine. But that was not at all the effect Amber felt as she allowed herself to take it all in, turning in a circle as she inspected the place.
There was evidence of careful thought in the house’s appointments. The windows were bare of curtains, letting the light slant in onto the wide pine boards of the floor and the hooked and braided rugs tossed here and there. More furniture similar to the style Mac had chosen for his office, was arranged in comfortable groupings around a stone fireplace so enormous she could have stood up in it with her arms extended to either side. Lamps of burnished iron with ochre shades cast a soft glow on an oversized russet-colored sofa, where a book and a pair of reading glasses had been tossed carelessly.
As if someone were having trouble concentrating.
Amber knew that feeling well.
Off the main room, a kitchen was in full view, separated only by a huge dining room table. Stairs led up to unseen rooms above, the bedrooms, no doubt.
“It’s...wonderful, Mac,” Amber said. And she meant it. Far from the ascetic bachelor existence she expected, Mac had made a home for himself, a beautiful and comfortable place.
A sound from outside caught her attention, an eerie wail, followed by a second one. “What—”
“Oh,” Mac said, grinning sheepishly. “That’s just the dogs. They’re a royal pain in the ass, but I’ve somehow got kind of attached to them. I can just leave them out there while we have dinner. They’ll hush in a minute—they’re just dying to see who came to visit.”
“Oh, let them in!”
Amber loved animals, and one of her chief regrets at the fast-paced lifestyle that she and the Sawyers lived was that it left no way to have a pet. It wouldn’t be fair to keep a dog or cat when she was gone for days at a time.
“If you’re sure,” Mac shrugged, and opened the back door.
A blur of black, brown and white bolted through the door, tumbling to a stop at her feet. Whimpering with excitement, the dogs wagged their whole bodies and made small whining noises.
“Oh—they’re darling!” Amber bent
to pet the plump dogs, gazing into their chocolate brown eyes and stroking their soft white chins. “And they’re so good. They’re not jumping at all.”
“Yeah, well. They’re just lazy. For a while there Heather and Randy were my only company and I’m afraid I might have spoiled them beyond repair.”
“Heather and Randy...” Amber felt her mouth go dry and she slowly straightened. Mac’s chuckle died on his lips and he clamped his mouth shut. Turning, he made a sharp sound and gestured towards the kitchen, and the dogs slunk back under the dining room table, where they rested their chins on their paws and continued to gaze adoringly at Amber, their tails thumping the floor.
“They’re just names,” Mac said flatly, going to the stove where he began banging pots and pans.
Just names. Just the names the two of them had picked out for the children they’d once talked of having. It was a lovers’ game, just a silly little daydream they’d shared. They’d planned a boy and a girl, and Amber had dreamed of the day she would hold babies in her arms who bore the mark of their father, mixed with her own genes, a final proof of the love that nothing could tear apart.
Crazy. She’d put those childish dreams behind, hadn’t she? It had been ages since she’d thought of their tender, silly plans...
But that wasn’t entirely true, was it? At night, in her lonely Nashville apartment, dreams came. Dreams of home and family and warmth and a closeness that would never again be torn apart, a union that would stand the test of time.
With effort Amber followed Mac toward the kitchen.
“It smells wonderful.” Amber slid into a massive wooden chair at the table. The carved, cool wood fit the contours of her body perfectly, and Mac set a glass of wine in front of her wordlessly. She drank deeply, the claret liquid burning as it went down. It was a smoky cabernet. On top of everything else, Mac seemed to have discovered fine wine. A small laugh escaped Amber’s lips.
