Down Home Carolina Christmas

by Pamela Browning

  The bra and robe disappeared somewhere, and Carrie didn’t much care. Luke tipped a finger across one breast, its skin glistening with rain. She arched her back so that when he opened his hand wide, her breast fit into it. He drew in his breath sharply.

  “You must be the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he told her, lowering his mouth to one nipple while he caressed the other. She didn’t exactly believe he was correct about that, considering that he could have his pick of any number of Hollywood starlets, but she was willing to listen if he was inclined to tell her more. However, he soon stopped touching her so he could strip off his trousers, which made Carrie want to giggle. It might have been Dixie who wanted to know how Luke Mason took off his pants, but it was Carrie who was about to find out.

  “You’re smiling,” Luke said. “How about letting me in on the joke?”

  “Can’t,” she said, slightly astonished that he was standing before her wearing nothing but a Band-Aid. “It’s too complicated to explain.” He was magnificently built. Those pictures on the Internet did not do him justice.

  “Nothing’s complicated anymore,” he said comfortingly as he settled between her thighs, the heat of him sending a delicious tremor rippling through her. As he made sure they were protected, she was still savoring it. He began kissing her from her temple all the way to the hollow at her throat, then moving enticingly lower. She threaded her fingers in his hair, her arousal growing as he stroked and nibbled and kissed her in hot spots she’d never known she had.

  He murmured her name, slid upward again and cupped her face between his hands.

  “Carrie, are you okay with this? I won’t do anything you’ll regret later, but I want you to know that this is more than a one-night stand.”

  “I don’t do one-night stands,” she said, her voice quavering. A gnarly lump of horsehair bulged from the torn upholstery under her hip, but it was easy to ignore under the circumstances.

  “I knew that,” he said, and she clasped her arms around him, mindlessly urging him closer, closer, the tip of him entering her ever so slowly. His breath was hot against her ear, and she may have cried out as he filled her, but maybe not. Since they weren’t accustomed to each other’s anatomy, it took them a while to adjust to a comfortable rhythm, but the proceedings were excruciatingly pleasurable while they sequenced through possibilities.

  She concentrated on him, touching places he might like to be touched, putting his experience before hers. But finally the heat inside her grew in intensity so that she could no longer think about his pleasure, only hers, and besides, a peek at his closed eyes and intent expression revealed that he was as much into this as she was. She loved how he pressed his cheek against her in a closeness that measured the full length of their bodies, how making love with him was the only thing that remained in her consciousness.

  The world exploded deep inside her, flowing outward in concentric rings that encompassed Luke and emotions hitherto unavailable. He held her fast as they descended from that incredible high, as heartbeats returned to normal and her previous mindlessness receded into a pleasant warmth throbbing through her veins. She would have liked to live in those moments forever, lost in sensation and feeling, at one with the wonder of the universe. Or at two with it, perhaps.

  Luke kissed her cheek, kissed her mouth, kissed her eyes. “You’re really something, Carrie Rose Smith,” he said softly.

  She didn’t speak, only pulled his head down to her chest and reveled in her unexpected happiness.

  Chapter Nine

  When Luke woke up in the big brass bed with Carrie draped across his torso, he thought he was still daydreaming. He’d imagined sleeping with her so many times that he couldn’t believe this was real.

  But she had real hair, a strand of which tickled his nose so much that he sneezed. And she had real lips, which kissed his earlobe and spoke his name. Also real breasts, one of which he was holding in his hand at that very minute.

  He squeezed it gently and she moved against him, sighing in contentment.

  “Did we really do what I think we did last night?” he said.

  “We did.”

  He was quiet for a moment before pushing himself up against the pillows. “It was wonderful, Carrie,” he said.

  “I’d agree with that,” she murmured.

  “How about if we go for it again?”

  She sat bolt upright. “Later. I’ve decided something, Luke.”

  “Haven’t we both been too busy to make momentous decisions?”

  “Yes, but last night after we came to bed, raindrops kept falling on my head. Like in the song.” She pointed upward, where a water stain had spread over the ceiling.

  “We didn’t get all the water in time,” he said in dismay. The stain resembled a part of a woman’s anatomy that Luke found particularly fascinating. Carrie’s was amazingly attractive, in fact.

  “I’m going to rent Smitty’s Garage to Whip Productions.”

  He regarded her in amazement. “You mean it?”

  “I have to. The roof needs repair. Now the ceiling needs painting besides. Will you tell Whip or shall I?”

  “You’d better,” Luke said. “He’ll be glad to hear from you.”

  She scrambled out of bed. “Where’d I put his business card?”

  He studied her with amusement. “It’s eleven o’clock on Sunday morning. Wouldn’t it be better to wait until he’s got his eyes open at least?” Whip slept late every chance he got.

  “Eleven o’clock!” Carrie exclaimed as her gaze fell on the clock. It corroborated Luke’s statement. “I’ve missed church.” She sank onto the bed, seeming to notice for the first time that she was stark naked.

  “Let me console you,” he said wryly as he reached for her. “The best way I know how. What’s this?” He rubbed at a red mark on her hip.

  “That’s from a bit of stiff upholstery material sticking out of the settee. It’ll go away soon enough.” She tugged the sheet up and rolled to curve herself next to him, his front to her back. “I haven’t missed church in years unless I was sick or away,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, Carrie. I’d have made sure you woke up in time if I’d known it was important to you.” His fingers began to lazily inscribe circles on her abdomen.

  “You had a really good idea a while ago,” she said, shimmying one leg over his.

  He felt himself responding and kissed the back of her neck. “What was that, sweet Carrie?”

  “We should make love again.”

  “I’m in favor of it,” he said as she drew his head down to hers. He leaned into the kiss, gathered her close. One thing about her—she really knew how to kiss. She knew how to do everything else, too.

  Well, he did, too, and so he put his whole heart into it. Not that it was too difficult. With Carrie, it almost had to be that way. Otherwise making love with her would be so pointless. He wanted their lovemaking to mean something, to be something she’d remember long after he’d gone. He’d never made an enemy of a former lover yet, and he wasn’t about to start now.

  “ARE YOU READY for something to eat?” she asked some time later as she sat up and rumpled her hair. She looked like a tousled sprite or maybe a charming elf, but she made love like a tiger. Not that Luke had ever made love with one, but if he had, he suspected that he’d rather have Carrie. He was astonished at her virtuosity, not to mention her versatility. She’d invented several positions he’d never tried before.

  “Not hungry yet,” he said, pulling her close again.

  “We should keep up our strength,” she said teasingly.

  “In that case, maybe we should try something that’s comparatively low energy,” he told her.

  “Like what? Watching TV? Listening to the radio?”

  “Or reading the paper.”

  “I don’t have the paper delivered. I usually read it at the garage.”

  “We could talk,” he said.

  “Talk. About what?”

  “About you,” he
suggested, circling one of her nipples with a forefinger.

  “Not about me,” she said.

  “Well, then anything.”

  “About you,” she replied. “About what you like to do. Who you really are.”

  “I think you know what I like to do by this time,” he said.

  “Mmm. Maybe you’re right.” She kissed his cheek, the tip of his earlobe, the place where his pulse beat in his throat.

  “Besides, we omitted the whole past-history thing. How many boyfriends you’ve had, how many starlets I’ve bedded.” He figured they might as well get it over with while still protected by the mantle of postcoital pleasure.

  “Do we have to go there?” Carrie asked plaintively. “I could skip it with no trouble at all.”

  “I don’t like baggage that falls open and dumps things out over a period of days, weeks or years,” he told her.

  “What is this—baggage inspection time? And if I don’t pass, I miss the flight?”

  “I meant what I said about not wanting a one-night stand,” he said apropos of nothing.

  She treated him to a sobering look. “I meant it when I told you I never do them.”

  “Meaning you tend toward long-term boyfriends,” he ventured. “As in serial monogamy.”

  Clearly he wasn’t going to back off this baggage business. She emitted a lengthy sigh and decided to level. “Okay. In high school there was Brandon Quigley. We broke up before we graduated and went our separate ways. Then I didn’t have a real boyfriend for a couple of years, but after I took over the garage I fell in love with an ad salesman from WYEW, the local radio station. We were a couple for two years or more. I got out when he started talking about moving to Charleston. I was into perpetuating the business and was starting to fix up the home place, so he went on without me.”

  “Didn’t he visit occasionally?”

  “Not much, and after he got engaged I dated a divorced guy who eventually went back to his wife. There was a junior executive at Yewville Mills who moved to Virginia after the mill shut down, and later three men in rapid succession—a pharmaceutical rep, a watermelon farmer from Pageland and a mobile-home installer.”

  “No engagements? Nothing became permanent?”

  “Nope. I couldn’t imagine settling down with any of them. I was young and stayed flighty for a while, though I really liked Mert, the mobile-home installer, and was sorry when he moved to Spartanburg. We tried a long-distance relationship, but it sputtered and died.”

  Luke studied her, taking in the way the corners of her mouth drooped uncharacteristically. “He broke it off, or did you?”

  “I did, but—oh, Luke, it all seems so silly now.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I always wanted more than any of my boyfriends did. Most of them were into quick, easy sex, no strings attached. I envisioned a real relationship that wouldn’t be put on hold every time hunting season rolled around or when they wanted to go camping or biking or on a golf weekend that couldn’t include me. I wasn’t thinking marriage, exactly. Just consideration. Shuffling their lives around so I’d be a priority. Does that make sense?”

  “I think so,” he said, touched by her words. He knew guys like the ones she’d described; men who were so into themselves that no woman could compete.

  “Anyway, that gets me over with, so how about you?”

  The last thing he intended was to come across like the men who had hurt her, so he had to figure out what he wanted to say and how much to reveal.

  “I’ve dated a lot in Hollywood. Many dates were arranged by my press agent and meant nothing to me. Most of them, in fact. In college, I had a girlfriend who refused to accompany me to L.A. when I got my big break.”

  “Did you love her?” Carrie asked.

  “I thought I did at the time.”

  “But did you?”

  “In retrospect, yes. We weren’t right for each other, that’s all.”

  “And the others? The women you met in California?”

  How to explain this? It wasn’t easy for someone who wasn’t in the business to understand.

  “I cared about them,” he said. “Unfortunately they all had their own agendas, and often I was in the way.”

  “Oh, like the guys I dated—self-absorbed, thoughtless?”

  He nodded. “Similar. The women I met usually planned careers in show business. Before anything could develop between us, they’d go to some faraway island for a magazine shoot, or if they managed to stay in town, I’d have to go on location without them. That kind of life is certainly not conducive to settling down with one person.”

  “I guess not” was all Carrie said. She nestled closer, and all of a sudden he couldn’t recall the faces of any of the women he’d dated back in California. And the men she’d gone out with were idiots if they didn’t understand what a prize Carrie was.

  He liked holding her in his arms, and he must have dozed before she suddenly pulled away.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked drowsily.

  She shot him a wild-eyed glance. “I completely forgot that I invited Memaw and the rest of my family for Sunday dinner! I have to start the pot roast.” She jumped out of bed, agitated. Her hair was in a tangle and she wore no makeup, but she was gorgeous.

  “Does this mean I have to go home?” he asked, studying her.

  “Yes. I mean, no.” She grabbed a robe off the back of the closet door. The closet was small, the room big. It had wallpaper with tiny pink roses scattered on a cream-colored background, and the cheval mirror in the corner reflected the bed. Last night it had reflected them in the bed, and he longed to hit the replay button.

  He sat up and smiled at her. “Stay or leave, Carrie. That was the question.”

  She moved to him and placed her hands on his shoulders. She smelled like vanilla, and he longed to bury his face in her hair and take her back into bed. “How about if you go home and let me start cooking. Come back around three o’clock and have dinner with my family.”

  “I’d like that,” he said honestly.

  “They won’t know how to treat a movie star.”

  “I’m just Luke Mason,” he said. “An ordinary guy.”

  “Yeah, like Godiva is ordinary chocolate. Speaking of which, are you ready for breakfast yet? I don’t do eggs.”

  “Something to eat would be good.” He was thinking waffles or pancakes or even granola.

  “Come downstairs and help yourself to a chocolate banana on a stick from my freezer,” she said, moving away and tying her robe around her.

  “That’s breakfast?”

  “’Fraid so,” she said, smiling back at him. “I buy them by the dozen at the Southern Confectionery Kitchen downtown. I figure that the banana is a healthy food. As for chocolate, researchers have lately discovered that it has health benefits. Plus, a chocolate banana is easy to eat when I’m in a hurry to work in my garden in the morning.”

  Luke followed along without comment, stopping at the kitchen door when he spotted the rabbit chowing down on rabbit kibble.

  “I don’t know,” he said doubtfully. “Maybe I’ll just have what he’s having.”

  She tossed him a foil-wrapped missile from the freezer. He peeled off the foil, stared at the frozen banana for a moment and concluded that he was happy to be eating breakfast with Carrie no matter what it was. The banana actually made an excellent breakfast, and at least he wasn’t required to pretend he liked grits. That was a big plus.

  CARRIE WAS TOUCHING UP her hair with a curling iron when the phone rang shortly after Luke left.

  “What was it like?” Dixie said. Carrie switched her cell phone to speaker and set it on the vanity top as she considered how to answer that.

  “Carrie?”

  “It’s a fine restaurant. You and I should go there sometime,” Carrie said.

  “Not the restaurant, silly. The people. And did you peek inside the limo?”

  “There’s no dirt. You know how sometimes bits of leaves cling to your shoe
s and they’ll be on the floor of your car? Well, this limo was spotless. No dirt on the carpet, no fingerprints on the doors. The driver must spend all day polishing it.”

  “What did you and Luke Mason talk about?”

  “The usual,” Carrie said.

  “What’s usual?”

  “He’s coming for dinner today. Are you still bringing dessert?”

  Silence. “Luke Mason is coming to dinner?”

  “Right. I invited him.”

  More silence.

  Carrie decided to provide additional information. If she didn’t, she’d be on the phone with Dixie for an hour. “He doesn’t have much of a family, and I felt sorry for him. He’s lonely.”

  “Luke Mason is lonely,” Dixie repeated as if utterly fascinated.

  “He’s a long way from home.”

  “What should I wear? Should I scrap the blueberry cobbler and bring my special tunnel-of-fudge cake, instead? What about allergies? Is he allergic to anything, like eggs? Wow, Carrie, I can’t believe you’re doing this to me!”

  “I’m not doing anything to you, Dixie. I’m doing something for Luke Mason.” How extensively she was doing things for Luke, not to mention to Luke, was something she had no intention of discussing.

  “So the tunnel-of-fudge cake would be okay?”

  “Sure, that sounds fine. I’ve got to hang up, Dixie. It’s time to set the table.”

  “Use Great-Grandma’s best tablecloth, the one with the lace at the corners. And don’t forget the cloth napkins,” Dixie cautioned.

  “With Voncille and Skeeter’s brood, I’m not sure I want to go the cloth-napkin route. Otherwise I’ll be washing and bleaching little white squares of fabric for the rest of the week. Bye, Dixie.”

  “Wait, wait. I forgot to ask you about Tiffany Zill. What’s she really like?”

  “Dixie—”

  “Tell, tell!”

  “Later. Besides, you’ll be glad to know that I’m going to sign a contract with Whip Productions so they can use Smitty’s for filming.”