by Peggy Webb
Jim looked up and saw her. In the eerie summer-light of near dawn, he stood at the top of the ridge and stared. Passion ripped through him so strongly, his knees actually became weak. Never taking his eyes off her, he dropped his end of the burden. “We’ll deal with this later, Sleddog,” he said quietly.
He took one step toward Hannah, cursing himself for waiting two weeks before coming to her. Damn his stiff-necked pride. He advanced slowly, savoring the moment, dragging out the anticipation until it zinged between them like the vibrations of a too-tight bowstring. A flush crept into her cheeks, the high coloring of desire.
When he was close enough to touch her, he stopped, his hands crammed firmly in his pockets. Their ragged breathing filled the air. “Hannah?”
“You came,” she whispered.
“Yes.” Still he didn’t touch her.
“You shouldn’t have.”
“I’ll always come. I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth until you say yes.”
Her hands trembled on the front of her robe, and her gun slid to the porch floor. “I can’t . . . but . . . heaven help me . . .” She stopped speaking. With Jim beside her, reasons didn’t matter anymore. Suddenly she reached for him.
That was all the sign he needed. He enfolded her close to his heart and buried his face in her hair. “Hannah, my love, my love,” he said over and over.
Cupping her face, he dragged his lips over hers with agonizing slowness. Her body trembled.
“Ahh, yes.”
He lifted his head. “Did you miss me, Hannah?”
She tangled her hands in his hair and pulled his head back down. “Please . . .”
Seeing Hannah’s eyes smoky with desire and her hair tumbled from sleep. Jim lost his control. His mouth took hers with a fierceness that tried to deny anything between them except love. Hannah matched him, fire with fire.
Even Sleddog, who had lived close enough to nature to know a mating game when he saw it, became a little embarrassed. He cleared his throat loudly then, getting no response, he left his burden on the path and stomped up the front steps.
“I don’t know about you,” he practically shouted as he passed by them and stomped into the cabin, “but I’m starving. It’s not every day a man gets up in the middle of the night to help deliver a bathtub.”
Hannah broke away and looked up at Jim.
“A bathtub?”
“The male of the species typically brings gifts when he comes courting.”
She looked toward the path, and there it was, an antique bathtub, sitting in all its clawfooted splendor in the middle of her flower bed. She gave a hoot of joy, running toward the tub as she shouted.
“A tub? Jim! A tub!” She bent over and ran her hand around the cold porcelain rim. “It’s heavenly. It’s divine. It’s absolutely stupendous.”
He grinned. “I take it you like the present.”
“Like it? I love it.”
“Then marry me.”
“Marry you?” Suddenly she became sober. “I’ve already told you no. I thought I made that very clear in San Francisco. I won’t change my mind, Jim. I cannot accept this tub.”
“The tub is my wedding gift to you.”
“A wedding gift? You’re trying to buy me with a tub?”
“It’s the Indian way. I learned it from my friend Colter.”
“He suggested a tub?”
“Well, not exactly. He suggested two mares and a stallion.”
Hannah only had to look at the mischievous twinkle in Jim’s eyes to know he was teasing. Serious or joking, it didn’t matter, she thought. She loved all his moods. With a great effort she forced herself to be sensible.
“I won’t take your gift, Jim. I won’t do anything to give you false hope. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“If you won’t take it, I guess I’ll just have to abandon it out there for a birdbath. I’m sure as hell not hauling it back down that cliff. Anyway, what will we tell Sleddog? I got him out of bed this morning at two to help me deliver that wedding present.”
“Don’t keep calling it that.”
“Well, call it an I’m-sorry-I-acted-such-an-ass gift.”
“A what?”
“I’m-sorry—”
“No,” she interrupted, laughing. “Please don’t repeat it.”
He took her hand and lifted it to his lips. “I’m sorry, Hannah . . . sorry I waited so long to come to you, sorry I didn’t give you more preparation before I proposed, sorry I ever let you leave San Francisco, sorry I didn’t make you mine the first time I laid eyes on you in the cow pasture in Greenville.”
“Jim.” That’s all she could bring herself to say. Just his name. But the way she said it made his heart leap. Her soft, jazzy voice wrapped the word in velvet and delivered it as a whole litany of love.
“I’m not leaving, Hannah. So you might as well let me and this tub in the door, or prepare to have us camp out here on your front porch.”
Hannah swung her gaze back to the tub. It was the most unusual gift she’d ever heard of—and the most thoughtful. Of all the trappings of civilization she’d left behind, only the tub caused her regret and envy. How she’d missed the long, luxurious soaks she’d indulged in before she chose the primitive life! And how discerning of Jim to recognize the one material possession she longed for. It was as if he knew what was in her heart and soul.
She wanted the tub; she almost lusted for the tub. Could she accept the gift and still remain staunch against his marriage proposal? The porcelain gleamed at her in the early morning sun, and she fell madly in love. She absolutely could not resist those lovely old claw feet and that wonderful deep basin of pure pleasure.
“I’ll take it.” She turned back to face him. “Thank you. It’s the best present I’ve ever received.” Seeing the eager glow on his face, she sought to set him straight. “But, Jim, I make no promises.”
“All I’m asking for is a hearing.” He touched her hair briefly, just where the sunshine burnished it with fire. “The tub is yours, love. No strings attached.”
They went inside and had breakfast with Sleddog.
o0o
Instead of resigning herself to Jim’s presence, Hannah found that she had a hard time squelching her joy. In the end she decided to forget about why he had come and simply revel in the moment.
Her step was light as she went into the small bathroom to change into a shirt and a denim skirt. After she came out, the three of them hauled the antique bathtub into Hannah’s cabin.
It was too big for the bathroom.
“Never mind. We’ll put it here.” Jim positioned it grandly to the left of the fireplace, just outside the small bathroom enclosure. “Who else do you know who can have a bubble bath beside a cozy fire?”
Hannah laughed. “It’s perfect.”
In honor of the new masterpiece, she canceled her day’s work, and the three of them set about installing the tub. Of the three, Hannah was the handiest with tools, but none of them knew a thing about plumbing.
“It’s a good thing I ain’t hankering for one of these contraptions. Nature’s good enough for me.” Sleddog sat back on his haunches and viewed with disgust the pile of screwdrivers and hammers and nuts and bolts and copper tubing. “Yessir, a good dip in the crick every Saturday night ought to see a body through.”
Jim rolled his eyes at Hannah, and they both suppressed their laughter.
“I think we can handle it from here, Sleddog.” Jim pulled a roll of bills from his pocket.
“Keep yer money. If neighbors would be neighborly instead of expecting a reward every time they do a good deed, the rest of the world would be might night as good as Alaska.”
“You can come up and take a bubble bath sometime.” Hannah smiled as she made the offer.
Sleddog looked horrified. “Me! In a tubful of bubbles. I’d as soon rassle with a walrus. Thank you just the same.”
Hannah went with him back down the path and over the ridge to his pickup truck. Bending down,
she planted a kiss on his shiny bald spot. “Thanks, Sleddog. You’re a real friend.”
“Ain’t no need to thank me. From the looks of things, that young feller would have got up here with that tub if he’d had to strap it to his back and crawl. Reminds me of that old moose that raises hell around here every September when he comes bugling for a mate.”
Chuckling, Hannah waved goodbye. Then she headed back to her cabin.
Jim was on his knees, struggling with a piece of copper tubing, addressing the tub in language that would do a sailor proud.
“I don’t think that tub understands a word you’ve said.”
When he turned around, Hannah laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“You should see your face; it’s covered with grease.”
“Oh, yeah? You think that’s funny, do you?” He stood up and came toward her.
Hannah could have outdistanced him at any time, but she wanted to be caught. And she didn’t dare think about that any further. When he hauled her against his chest, she circled her arms around him. It seemed the natural thing to do under the circumstances.
“Let’s see if you think this is funny.” Jim rubbed his nose against her cheek. “And this.” He trailed a greasy hand down the side of her neck and into the top of her blouse.
At the lightest touch of his fingers, her entire body went languid. She reached down for his zipper. That, too, seemed the natural thing to do.
“It’s not so funny,” she whispered. “It’s not funny at all.”
As she gazed into his eyes, she stopped thinking at all. Instinct took over.
For a long moment there was no sound in the cabin except their labored breathing, then Jim murmured her name, and they came together like two wild creatures whose only thought was to satisfy their raging need.
When it was over, he smoothed down her skirt and pulled her close. “I didn’t mean to do it that way, Hannah.”
And she knew that in one battle, at least, Jim had won, always would win. She might deny that she would be his wife until kingdom come, but from that moment on she would never turn away from his lovemaking.
“Any way, any time.” She pressed her face to his chest. “What are we going to do?”
His hands caressed her back and moved upward to tangle in her thick hair. “I’m going to spend the next two days convincing you to marry me.”
“Only two days?”
“Yes. Next Monday I’ll be back at my desk at The Daily Spectator, working like the devil to catch up. I managed to escape this weekend. Starting tonight, we’ll have two days of heaven, Hannah.”
“The two days of heaven started the minute you came over the ridge.”
“That will do for starters, Dr. Donovan.” He stepped back and smiled at her. “And now, what do you say we get to work on my wedding present.”
o0o
It took them all day to install the tub.
“But we have no bubble bath,” Hannah lamented when they had finished.
Triumphantly Jim unpacked his duffel bag and held a bottle aloft.
“Lavender.” Hannah read the label. “What a luscious, old-fashioned fragrance.”
“My mother’s favorite.”
Hannah put the bottle on the side of the tub. “Tell me more about her.”
He straddled a chair beside the fireplace. “She loved lavender. We hardly had the price of a meal, much less an extravagance. There was a bath shop six blocks from our apartment, on the way to one of the houses she cleaned.”
Hannah watched his face as he talked. There was no bitterness there, no self-pity, merely an acceptance of the way things had been in his childhood.
“I used to meet her after work and walk her home. Always, she’d stop in front of the bath shop. ‘Jim,’ she’d say, ‘lavender is the fragrance of real ladies.’ Then she’d straighten her shoulders, and we’d walk on home.”
He left the chair and began to pace the room. “When I was ten I had a paper route. I saved pennies for a year. I had just enough to buy her one of those little paper pillows filled with lavender. I’ll never forget the look on her face that Christmas morning. You’d have thought I’d bought her a queen’s crown.”
The bottle of lavender bubble bath sitting on the edge of the tub took on a new significance for Hannah. It was no longer just a fragrance he had chosen; it was a bottle of memories, the sweet, sad memories of his childhood.
“Thank you, Jim,” she said quietly.
Turning, he smiled. “For what?”
“For sharing a part of your past with me.”
He crossed the room and took her in his arms. “I want to share my future with you, too.” His hands caressed her back. “Hannah, don’t you see? We belong together. We met against all odds. Fate brought us together, and love will see us through.”
“You can say that now, Jim. But what about later? What will you say when John Searles turns you loose again on the back streets and alleys of San Francisco? What will happen to our future when you take up your gauntlet and become the West Coast Warrior again?”
“I’ve never stopped being that warrior. I’ve merely been given a reprieve, a time to woo the woman I love” —he lifted a strand of her hair and brought it to his lips— “the woman I’ll always love.”
“Let’s not talk; let’s take a bubble bath.”
He leaned back and lifted that sardonic brow at her. “Woman, I like your straightforward way of seduction. Nothing subtle, just get right to the point.”
She gave him an arch smile. “Who said anything about seduction? I was merely offering to share my bath with you.”
“I hope you’re planning to make up for banning me from your bath in Greenville.”
She laughed. “You’ll never know how close I came to pulling you into the tub.”
“You’ll never know how close I came to getting in—whether you wanted me to or not.”
Jim started toward the tub, but Hannah put a hand on his arm and stopped him. “Would you mind building a small fire?”
“I’ll light your fire anytime, Hannah.”
She smiled. “In the fireplace.”
One look at her wicked, witty face told him that whatever she had in mind would add up to total delight. Without another word he started to build a fire.
Hannah turned off all the lights so that the cabin was lit only by the red-gold flicker of the fire and the misty summer night glow that poured through the skylight. She led Jim to a chair beside the fire.
“I hope this is a ringside seat.”
“The best in the house,” she said as she walked toward the tub. Turning the hot water on full force, she dumped in the lavender. The steamy fragrance rose from the tub, permeating the cabin. With the water whooshing beside her, Hannah turned back to Jim. Ever so slowly she began to unbutton her blouse. His eyes glistened as a glimpse of white satin came into view. It was another of those delightfully feminine garments she wore under her functional work clothes, a tiny wisp of white satin and lace.
Jim’s passion rose. What a woman, he thought. She could handle a hammer, a team of sled dogs, and a demanding career as easily as she could breathe. And yet she was as feminine as the white lace on her teddy. With one graceful gesture of her arm she lifted her heavy hair and arched her neck. Her pose was both provocative and inviting.
He made a move to rise, but Hannah held up her hand. It was her show. He let her have it, even if the effort at control killed him.
Her thumbs hooked the waistband of her denim skirt. It slithered slowly down her hips, revealing the French-cut sides of her teddy. With her nipped-in waist, her long legs, and the delicious swelling of her hips, she was the most desirable woman Jim had ever known.
With a smile designed to set every wolf in the wilderness to howling, Hannah leaned over the tub. The view presented to Jim sent his blood pressure up at least to stroke level, he calculated. Hannah turned back around, and with the languid look of a sorceress let a handful of the fragrant water t
rickle between her breasts. The firelight turned the water in the tub and Hannah’s skin to a fine gold. Still smiling, she dipped another handful of water and sent it cascading across the flat planes of her stomach. The bright drops of moisture traveled slowly downward, licking Hannah as intimately as a lover. Wet satin and lace molded her body.
She repeated the process until she was sleek and glistening, then she started toward him, using that walk that made him want to lay kingdoms at her feet. She stood proudly before him, his smoke-and-fire woman, wet and gilded by the firelight.
There was no sound in the room except Jim’s ragged breathing.
“Good Lord, woman, do you mean to drive me mad?”
She smiled. “Only for two days.”
“I’ll take what I can get” He reached for her. Pulling her close, he peeled away the teddy and licked the small drops of water that clung to her stomach. The warmth of the fire, the fragrance of lavender, and the nearness of Hannah filled his senses. “This could turn out to be the longest bath in the history of man,” he said as his tongue followed the path of moisture.
It was a long time before they made it to the tub, and an even longer time in the tub. Among the fragrant bubbles they discovered pleasures they’d only dreamed of. Forgotten were the separations, the silences, the secret fears that kept them apart. Nothing mattered except the two of them and the great moments they shared.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
They had one night of wonder.
During that time they didn’t talk much, but merely took advantage of their time to be together. Their loving was so bright, so precious that they were both afraid talking would spoil it.
But the pressing matter of marriage remained on Jim’s mind. At breakfast on the day after his arrival, he decided the time had come to broach the subject.
“Hannah. Let’s talk.”
“I’ll make fresh coffee.”
When she started to rise, he stopped her. Catching her hand, he pulled her gently back into her chair.
“Stay . . . please. I don’t need fresh coffee. I need you.”
