It was a small limestone pool secluded in an out-of-theway place. In the rays of the early morning sun slanting through the forest, the surface of the still water gleamed like golden glass. Delicate spiderwebs, jeweled with tiny drops of dew, trembled in the light breeze, and flowers swayed on the opposite shore. As if spellbound, Maggie knelt on the sloping bank and brought handfuls of the fresh, sweet water to her face.
The water clung to her eyelashes in crystal droplets so that she saw the scene before her through a misty veil. When she looked down, it was to see her image in the water rippling and wavering as the pool grew still again. As she stared into her image, she thought she heard familiar silvery laughter, and she quickly glanced up. Beneath a rainbow’s arch, a cardinal rose with a scarlet flash of wings from a dog hobble bush, setting its dangling white blossoms aquiver, and she thought she must have been mistaken. She hadn’t heard laughter after all; it was only a bird.
But when she again looked down at her image in the mirrored surface of the pond, she saw that her hair was piled on top of her head in braids. She was wearing a dress with a lace collar. And then she realized that she wasn’t looking at her own reflection at all—she was looking at Peg Macintyre.
Maggie blinked, and the image in the pond was again her own, her eyes swollen with sleep, her hair tumbling over her shoulders in an unruly mass.
She did not want to become Peg Macintyre again, and certainly she didn’t want Peg to take over her thoughts, her emotions or her body. And if she and Tate made love, she wanted it to be the two of them, not people from a long time ago.
But since it had happened before, what was to keep it from happening again? With a fierce surge of longing, she wanted to keep her emotions for herself. She wanted her body to be her own when and if she and Tate ever made love because she knew that the act was going to be so special that she would want to remember it as long as she lived.
Make love this morning, Peg told her. He’s ready. You’re ready. Why wait?
Maggie’s breath caught in her throat. Why indeed? She knew in that moment that she couldn’t leave Tate Jennings this morning without making sure that he knew how much she loved him. It might be crazy, but she did love him, liked him, was attuned to him in an uncanny way.
As if in a dream, Maggie stood up and unbuttoned her shirt. She slipped off the shorts, unfastened her bra and laid it neatly on top of the other clothes. Then she slid the panties down her legs and stood naked, her hands crossed over her breasts.
She stepped into the pool and waded into the shallows. The water was warmer than she had expected; perhaps it was fed by a hot spring. She leaned back and let the water support her weight, dipping her head back to let the current flow through the strands of her hair. She half floated, her breasts buoyant and as white as two pale moons; the rounded shell of her abdomen made another moon farther down. Below that the soft springy hair between her legs drifted on the current like seaweed.
Slowly she submerged and opened her eyes underwater. She surfaced quickly, listening for the Little People that Tate so often mentioned. She didn’t hear them and she didn’t see them, but she had an idea that they were around. If they were, she hoped that they would not confuse or confound either Tate or her this morning.
They won’t, I promise. Don’t you know it was only their job to bring you to this magic place? said Peg’s voice in her ear.
“Go away,” Maggie said out loud, her words echoing from the banks, the trees, the mist-shrouded forest beyond. “We don’t need you.” She didn’t feel the least bit constrained about talking to someone who wasn’t there; she suspected that Peg was with her more often than not.
I’ll go, agreed Peg, and her voice slid down the scale into a chord of faint dulcimer music.
Maggie smoothed her wet hair back from her face and was wading toward shore when Tate appeared soundlessly in the shadows, brushing his way past the rainbow and setting the blossoms of the dog hobble to trembling.
Maggie understood as soon as she saw the expression in Tate’s eyes that speech was unnecessary. He knew what she had in mind, had known before he even started out from the camp. Had Tsani sent him here? Or had he come of his own accord?
And then there was no doubt. She knew as well as she knew her own name that Tate had come because he had wanted her, that his sixth sense had told him exactly where to look. He never had needed words to understand what she was thinking.
Without taking his eyes off her, he slipped out of his loincloth with a minimum of motion. He stepped into the pond and came to her slowly, his body parting the water so that it curved out in a wide wake toward the shore. He held out his hands, and when she extended hers, he gripped them tightly, warm current flowing from his body to hers. Did he love her? Did she love him? Oh, yes.
Water streamed down her body, dripped from her nipples, lapped between her legs. He crushed her to him and kissed her deeply, his tongue invading her mouth, his hands pressing her buttocks so that the tiny round form of the baby was drawn against him. She, who was always aware of the child, wondered if he could feel it between them or if he even thought about it. She doubted it; now he was gripping her head tightly between his hands, angling it so that his seeking mouth had better access to hers; he was sliding his fingers down her slippery neck to count the bones in her spine; he was cupping her breasts in his wet hands and rubbing his chest back and forth against them until her nipples were hard, tight, water-glazed berries.
“Oh,” she said, clinging to him tightly. “Oh, Tate.”
“Yes, and you are Maggie and no one else,” he said, and then he pulled her up against him so that her feet no longer touched the bottom of the pool, and he gripped her tightly so that her legs went around him, holding him fast. She felt the heat of his erection against her belly; she moaned low in her throat as he captured her lips.
And then she ceased to think and was lost to the passion that had been so long building. He waded with her up the sandy bank and laid her reverently upon a cushion of soft green ferns; he lay beside her and pressed his hand with its bronze skin upon her pale breast, his fingers splayed. “How lovely you are,” he murmured, almost to himself. She looked at the contrast of their skins. “How lovely we are,” she said.
He bent to kiss the taut skin below her breasts, skimmed lower and dipped his tongue into her navel. His hair slid silkily against her skin, and she sighed deeply. He cupped both hands over the small convexity of the baby and lifted his head in concern. “Will I hurt you, Maggie, if I touch you here?”
She put her hands over his. “No,” she said.
Slowly he lowered his lips to touch the place where the baby was sheltered. “How amazing it is that your body can produce a child. How miraculous,” he said.
“I know.”
His lips feathered up until they reached the sensitive lower contours of her breast. He nibbled there, sucked at the translucent skin with its blue veins so close beneath the surface, then eased his mouth over her ripe nipple. His lips were hard and then soft by turns, evoking sensation from deep within the most secret recesses of her body.
Slowly he eased over onto her, watching her for any sign of discomfort. Her hipbones bit into his stomach, and her rib cage rose to meet his. She felt as if the breath were crushing out of her and being replaced by some new essence, and she smiled against the smooth dark skin of his neck. Her tongue licked droplets of water from its crease, and he lifted himself on his elbows to place his hands on either side of her face. His hair curtained them off from the sky, now a brilliant shade of blue sifted through a leafy net of green, creating a shifting mosaic on their naked bodies. The ferns beneath her were hopelessly crushed. She felt the gentle impressions of their curled fronds biting into her skin.
“Kiss me,” she said, and Tate kissed her, slowly and with great feeling. “Again,” she murmured against his lips, and when he did, she wondered how she could have lived this long without feeling this way about a man before. He knew exactly how to touch her in orde
r to elicit the maximum feeling; he knew when to increase pressure and when to lessen it; he fit himself to her as if he had known the shape of her body all his life.
There was no hurry. Here in this quiet place with birdsong cascading overhead, with the wind rustling the ferns beside them and with the sweet scent of wildflowers drifting over and about them, they could pursue this happiness unfettered by the concerns of everyday life. They had nothing to do and nowhere to go; all they had to do was to concentrate on giving each other pleasure.
He kissed her until he said he knew every inch of her body, and she touched him, exploring all the curves and crevices. She pressed her ear against his heartbeat; he traced her eyebrows with his tongue. She discovered a birthmark behind his ear, and he found that she was ticklish in the crease between buttocks and thigh. She laughed with him, let her tongue linger on the most tasty parts of him, learned the different fragrances of him. Finally, after what seemed like forever or only a moment, Maggie wasn’t sure which, he said, “Are you ready for me, love?” and she nodded as he wrapped his arms completely around her and drew her hips upward to meet him.
Maggie closed her eyes, expecting a hard, ramming jolt; instead there was only a delicious pressure that kept on and on and on until she was warm and full with him. She rose against him, crying out, wanting more, and when she shuddered beneath him, whispering his name, he drove into her again and again until she thought she had never known such joy. It burst within her with the force of a thousand pinwheels, a million shooting stars, a hundred suns exploding behind her eyes. At last he collapsed above her, damp and sated, and she buried her face in his shoulder and let the tears come.
He kissed them away. “You are mine now,” he said, brushing her tangled hair from her face.
“I think I always was,” Maggie said unsteadily, and then she pulled him down to her for another kiss.
MAGGIE WAS SOPPING UP the melted ice cream from the trunk of her car shortly after noon that day when the familiar gray compact car wheeled into the clearing of her cabin and pulled around to the side where Maggie was parked. Bronwyn jumped out of her car and said, “Where in the world have you been?”
Maggie straightened and took in the gold buttons marching in lines down the front of Bronwyn’s double-breasted red blazer. A Hermès scarf adorned the neckline, and Bronwyn wore neat navy pumps that had cost three hundred dollars. Maggie had been with her when she bought them.
“How nice to see you, Bronwyn,” Maggie said with exaggerated politeness. “Couldn’t you at least say something pleasant before confronting me with what I suspect is a belligerent question?” She went back to mopping up the ice cream, which unfortunately was pistachio. The whole trunk compartment was crisscrossed with dried puddles of pale green goo.
“Sorry. I am glad to see you, Maggie. Especially since I left Atlanta at the crack of dawn this morning to bring your computer to you, not daring to trust it to the packers and shippers, and I arrived here over an hour ago. I waited around wondering where in the world you could be before riding back into town to ask if I was in the right place. Mr. Pincher at the general store said—”
“Mr. Pinter,” Maggie said. “His name is Jacob Pinter.”
“Well, all right, but anyway, he said that indeed this was the right cabin seeing as there aren’t too many others on this road, and he wanted to know if I was interested in renting. I said no, and he said that maybe you’d gone away on a trip, and I said that you wouldn’t do that without telling me, though I’m not at all sure that you would tell me, and— where were you, Maggie?”
“Away on a trip,” Maggie said. She crumpled up the rag and reached for a clean one.
Bronwyn narrowed her eyes. “Away on a trip from which you return with a gallon of pistachio ice cream melted all over the trunk of your car? And what is this in your hair?” She plucked a green thing from the top of Maggie’s head.
Maggie inspected it. “It looks like fiddlehead fern,” she said equably.
“Indeed it does,” Bronwyn said, flicking it away.
“I bought the fax machine,” Maggie said for the sake of distraction.
“Good. Will you be able to set it up?”
“It will be operational by this time tomorrow, I promise.”
Hands on her hips, Bronwyn took in the fallen tree at the other end of the clearing, and she spared a cursory glance for the cabin. “I thought I’d spend the weekend here. We can yak and giggle and talk over things like we usually do.”
Maggie’s heart fell to her toes. Tate had claimed errands in town today, and she had invited him to come over afterward. She had not planned on having company.
“So, where would you like me to put my suitcase?” Maggie’s guest looked at her expectantly, overnight bag in hand, and bared her teeth in what she probably hoped would pass for a cheerful grin in an obvious attempt at trying to be a good sport.
“In the bedroom will be fine,” Maggie said weakly, and Bronwyn disappeared into the cabin, leaving Maggie in blessed quiet.
Maggie finished mopping the rubber liner of the trunk with a wet sponge and, girding herself for conflict, went in to see how Bronwyn was managing.
Bronwyn was managing to be a nuisance. By the time Maggie reached her, she had changed into a pair of silk slacks as well as a matching top and had found out that the obscure long-distance telephone company that held the local franchise would not accept her credit card.
“You have to get used to things being, well, a little bit slower here,” Maggie cautioned, but she was secretly amused.
“It’s not going to be easy being incommunicado until I get back to Atlanta,” Bronwyn said.
“Which will be when?” Maggie asked hopefully.
“Monday,” Bronwyn said with heartfelt longing.
“Slow down. Take it easy. That’s what this place is for.”
Bronwyn spared a glance at Maggie’s attire. “I don’t know, Maggie. You seem to have slowed down so much that we might have to jump-start you to get you going again.”
“Living here isn’t half-bad,” Maggie said. “You might like it. I do.”
Bronwyn muttered something that sounded a lot like “Hmphf.” As Maggie washed her hands, Bronwyn added, “I brought you some of my sister-in-law’s maternity clothes. Not that I think your wardrobe needs sprucing up or anything,” she said pointedly.
Maggie looked at the clothes, which Bronwyn had hung from a hook on the back of the bedroom door. “Thanks,” she said with a marked lack of enthusiasm. Wearing such garments was the furthest thing from her mind. This morning she had felt womanly and sexy and beautiful again. Remembering Tate’s lovemaking, she felt a thrill of happiness. The intensity of it was still with her; the glow had not faded.
“Maggie? I asked you how you’ve been feeling,” Bronwyn said, looking at her strangely.
“Absolutely wonderful,” Maggie said in a dreamy voice. Realizing that this sounded oddly suspect, she added hastily, “Most of the time, anyway.”
“You’re looking fantastic,” Bronwyn said with her usual critical frown.
“Thank you.” Maggie dried her hands on a paper towel and tried to mind her manners. “Have you eaten lunch?”
“Have you?”
Neither she nor Tate had been hungry—at least for food—after their tumultuous session of lovemaking in Tate’s secluded sylvan hideaway. Maggie smiled now, treasuring those moments. No matter that neither of them had actually spoken those special words I love you. They each knew what the other felt.
“Maggie, I asked you if you had eaten lunch.”
“No. No, I haven’t. How about a barbecue sandwich?”
“Whatever. Is that what you eat here?” In Atlanta, they both enjoyed eating out at fashionable lunch spots. They usually ordered delectable fresh seafood salads, or homemade potato chips served with bleu cheese at the Buckhead Diner, or tomato Montrachet at their favorite little café.
“I eat whatever is easy,” Maggie said. She took a hunk of barbecue out of
the freezer along with two frozen buns. She popped the barbecue in the microwave oven first.
“I heard from Kip the other day,” Bronwyn said. She had perched on a bar stool and was dangling one expensive shoe. “He called the office.”
Maggie turned and leaned with her back against the counter, her arms folded across her chest. “And what did that no-good bum have to say for himself?” She didn’t feel one iota of interest in Kip Baker, which surprised her. She’d have thought that she’d be eager to know how he was, or if the battle of the South American beauty queens was wearing on his nerves, or if he missed her. She only felt a kind of detachment, as if he were the friend of a friend of a friend whose name had come up in desultory conversation.
“He wondered how you were. He wondered where you were. It seems that he’s tried to phone you at your apartment several times, but you were never there.”
“I don’t suppose he mentioned the baby,” Maggie said.
Bronwyn studied her cuticles. “Actually, he didn’t. I kept waiting, but…” and here Bronwyn spread her hands in a gesture of resignation, “nothing. He didn’t even say any other words that start with B—no begrudge, boondoggle or Biafra.”
“No begrudge, boondoggle, or Biafra, maybe, but I bet Kip Baker can still throw around a lot of bull,” muttered Maggie.
“If you have a message for him, I’d be happy to relay it if he calls again,” Bronwyn said.
“Just one,” Maggie said, taking the barbecue out of the microwave and replacing it with the buns. “Drop dead.”
“That’s a bit extreme. Are you sure you want me to tell him that?”
“I don’t care what you tell him as long as you keep in mind that my life is in turmoil because of him. We were together for over two years, Bronwyn. I thought we were happy together.”
“Obviously he wasn’t too happy about the idea that baby makes three.”
“Until I showed him the results of the pregnancy test, Kip had never mentioned one thing about going anywhere. Then he acted like he had been planning on going to South America all his life and as if photographing a bunch of beauty contestants was his big chance for lasting fame. I’m glad he’s gone. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, Bronwyn, and I don’t need Kip Baker. This baby and I are going to manage without him, thank you very much, and we won’t need his help.” She pushed a sandwich across the counter to Bronwyn and appropriated the other bar stool for herself.
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