An Accidental Woman

by Barbara Delinsky

  He caught her mouth and kissed her once, slowly, then again. That fast, she began to feel the warmth of it.

  He drew back again, this time resting his ear on the pillow. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “You’re a good kisser.”

  “Not about that. About doing it. I want to do it, Poppy. Do you want to?”

  She did. She didn’t.

  “Are you afraid?” he asked.

  She was terrified, but how could she say that? Sex had never terrified her before. Strong women weren’t frightened of sex. Rebels certainly weren’t.

  His smile was exquisitely gentle. “I think you are. I think you’re afraid you won’t feel what you want to feel. You’re afraid it won’t work. You’re afraid I’ll be turned off by something and that I won’t be able to get it up or keep it there. Is that it?”

  He did understand after all. Her chin wobbled, but she nodded.

  “I won’t have that problem,” he said in a voice that had grown raspy again. “Trust me, I won’t have that problem.” His eyes fell to her breasts. “You are just so beautiful.”

  “Maybe there,” she cried, “but not—”

  “Not where? Your legs?” He ran a hand down. “You can’t feel that, Poppy, but I do, and they feel just right.” The backs of his fingers brushed their way up her body until they grazed her breasts.

  The sensation was so strong that she closed her eyes, put her head back, drew in a breath.

  “Your body’s working,” he whispered against her throat, “so I’m thinking that the problem is emotional. I’m thinking that you feel guilty doing this.”

  She did, indeed, but his knuckles were lightly chafing her breasts, taking away her breath in the process, and suddenly she didn’t care about the other. She might die of guilt in the morning, but she wanted this now.

  Taking his face in her hands, she kissed him. Immersing herself in the novelty of it and the pleasure it brought, she pushed guilt away, pushed fear away, until all that remained was the feeling. She focused on that—on the heat, the tingling, the sense of being feminine. She kept it up while he removed the rest of her clothes—focused on the feeling—and it was so intense that she was suddenly the impatient one, pushing away his clothes just to get him closer.

  If he was unusually slow or gentle or careful, she didn’t know it, because she loved what he did. It had been so long, and she had been so frightened. But the fullness was there, the rising inside, and if the orgasm she had was different from the ones she’d had before the accident, she couldn’t say that it was any less satisfying. It was a miracle.

  And even if she hadn’t climaxed, she would have reveled in his. His entire body shook with the force of it. It was the best thing that had happened to her since wheelchairs with mag wheels—which was what she told Griffin when his wristwatch beeped at five the next morning.

  Griffin was not pleased.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Griffin didn’t like the hour, didn’t like the darkness, didn’t like Victoria butting in between his leg and Poppy’s. He didn’t like the fact that he was booked on a six-thirty flight to Minneapolis. What really bothered him, though, was the word “thing.” “The best thing since mag wheels? I don’t call what we did a thing.” “What would you call it?”

  “The best experience of my life,” Griffin said. They were lying face-to-face, now, though they hadn’t been for long. She had spent most of the night on her stomach, with pillows comfortably arranged. Stretches the muscles, she announced in the way she had of needing to remind him that she was disabled. He didn’t care how she slept, as long as it was with him, and in truth, he found her backside as exciting as her front. Of course, now he could see her breasts. They had an immediate impact on him. He reached out to touch, thought twice about it, pulled back. “Can’t do this now. Gotta get up.”

  Defying him, she touched his chest.

  He held her hand still. “I have a plane to catch.”

  She pulled her hand free, wrapped it around his neck, and brought him close for a kiss, and it fired him up all over again. He was as hard as he had been the night before—as hard as he had ever been. He whispered her name in a last attempt to stop, but she wouldn’t allow it—and how could he stop? She wanted him. If she wanted to call it sex, fine. If she wanted to call it a thing, that was fine, too. Yes, he had to catch a plane, but satisfying her was more important.

  And so pleasurable for him. And so easy. She might not be able to move her legs, but he could move them. He brought one up over his hip, opening her, and he quickly filled that space. He loved how tight she was, loved the sensual way she moved her upper body. He loved the catch of her breath, the shuddering sighs, the guttural little sounds she made when the heat rose in her. It was all he could do not to come a dozen times in response, but he waited, waited, held back until she peaked first, before letting go himself.

  He wanted to lie there with her and enjoy the afterglow, but he did have a plane to catch. So he scooped her up and took her into the shower. Doing this was important to him. I can’t stand in the shower, she had said, another of those roadblocks she had tried to throw in his way, but he knocked it down like he had the issue of dancing. The grab bars that lined the shower stall offered a perfect little ledge for propping her up while he soaped her, while she soaped him, while they kissed and touched and, incredibly, made love again. Then he wrapped her in a towel, set her out of the stall in the displaced shower chair, and let her watch while he hurriedly dressed.

  “I am so late,” he said, hopping on one leg to put a sock on the other, “but it was worth every second.”

  She looked flushed, sated and pleased.

  He tugged on his jeans. “I guessed it would be that way the first time I laid eyes on you—no, even before that. I felt it on the phone.”

  “You did not,” she chided, but she was smiling widely.

  “I did. There was something between us right from the start. You are unique, Poppy.”

  She patted the arm of her chair. “I am that.”

  He wasn’t going to deny that part of it. Pushing his arms into the sleeves of his shirt, he fastened two buttons while he chose his words. Then he put his own hands on the arms of the chair and put his face level with hers. “This chair is part of who you are. I have no problem with that. I don’t see that it interferes with anything I want in a woman.” He kissed her nose. “I love you, Poppy.”

  He wouldn’t have minded if she had cried then. As helpless as he had felt when discouragement made her cry, tears of happiness were okay.They were appropriate, along with a smile, a hug, and a kiss, not to mention a return of those three words.

  There was none of that, though. Her smile faded. Her eyes grew sad.

  He steeled himself. If she planned to say something about her disability, he would clobber her. “Poppy . . .”

  Tears did come to her eyes, but they weren’t tears of happiness. She shook her head slowly and pleaded in a whisper, “Don’t say that. Don’t spoil this.”

  “I was hoping to make it even better,” he teased, desperate at least for a smile. “I haven’t ever said those words to a woman before. It’s momentous, don’t you think?”

  Still she didn’t smile.

  Pushing up, he finished buttoning his shirt. He brushed his teeth, scrubbed his hair with a towel, combed it first with his hands, then a brush. All the while, she was silent.

  “Don’t feel you have to say anything,” he remarked. “Telling a person you love him is big stuff. I wouldn’t want you saying it unless you felt it, which clearly you don’t right now. I just wanted you to know how I felt.” He glanced at his watch and swore softly. “I gotta go.”

  * * *

  Griffin had never had his heart broken. He had always been the one who was less involved, and though he tried to be gentle about moving on, he knew he had caused pain. Now he felt it himself.It wasn’t that he and Poppy had broken up, just that he had wanted her to say those words. Okay, he knew she had h
ang-ups about the accident. But as a couple, they had something good going, something special. And he was human. He wanted to be loved, too.

  She might love him. Or she might not.

  Needing to protect himself in that very dark early morning—needing to reclaim the Griffin he had been before he had ever heard Poppy’s voice—he drove Buck’s truck to the marina where the Porsche was stashed. He greeted Sage with an enthusiasm she had probably never known, and once he was on the highway, he put his foot to the floor.

  He was pulled over going eighty-five, and though the state trooperwasn’t much older than he was and might have appreciated love-life problems, Griffin took his ticket like a man. When he returned to the road, he drove sanely.

  * * *

  Poppy picked up the girls and brought them back to her house for breakfast. She knew that Micah would welcome the extra hour to work, and she welcomed the distraction. She tested Missy on her spelling words and baked up a quick batch of cookies when Star mentioned a bake sale. By the time she dropped the girls at school, she was feeling comfortable with her life again. Very comfortable. Pleased, actually.She had satisfied Griffin. The thought of that brought relief. Brought a sense of triumph.

  On the other issue, the issue of taking care of two little girls, well, she wasn’t Heather. Not many surrogate mothers could be as good as that. But she was doing okay at it, for a paraplegic.

  On her way home, she stopped by the cemetery and told that to Perry Walker.

  He didn’t answer.

  But then, he was there and she was here.

  * * *

  Micah was putting in spiles. He remembered the old days, when holes were hand-cranked by a brace and bit, metal spouts were hammered into the trees, and buckets hung directly below. His spiles were plastic now. Each had two feet of thin plastic tubing already attached and hanging down, thanks to the work he’d done late nights for the last few weeks.Sleep? He didn’t need sleep. His bed was lonely and cold. Sleep only caused him to lose focus, and when he lost focus, he thought of Heather, and then his heart positively ached. He couldn’t explain the yearning he felt—couldn’t explain the sadness that threatened to turn him inside out. Anger was easier to bear than the sadness, so he hid behind that. Heather had kept secrets. She had kept him in the dark. She had betrayed him. That was cause enough for anger.

  This—this focus on tapping—was therapeutic. Flatlanders assumed it was mindless work—make a hole, stick in a spout, hang a pail, get syrup.

  Mindless work? They had no idea. First off, you had to know where to make a hole. If it was too close to an old hole, you wouldn’t get anything worth boiling. If it was drilled straight in, you wouldn’t get the force of gravity. And if you agonized over it, you’d take so long that you wouldn’t have half the trees tapped by first run.

  Micah worked fast. One look and he knew whether a tree needed one tap or two, and he knew just where those taps should be. Using a power drill, he made a hole that angled slightly up as it went in, so that the sap would drip down. He knew how deep to drill and not come out with the darker shavings that meant he’d hit heartwood. Heartwood was no good. Sap came from sapwood, and the shavings from that were light.

  Once the hole was made, he inserted the spile and tapped it in. He knew how hard to tap and did it with an economy of motion. He used a fitting-assembly tool to quickly and efficiently attach the drop line to the lateral line, and he didn’t linger at it. Once the connection was made, he moved on to the next tree.

  For the past three years, he had done this with Heather. He drilled, and she tapped while he made the fitting to the lateral line. They had worked well as a team, moving from grid to grid with remarkable speed. Her enthusiasm matched his. He had never thought of tapping as a chore, because having her there made it fun.

  There was no fun this year. What he felt instead was out-and-out anxiety. The sun was high, the snow was thinning, and the crows were cawing up a storm. These were the signs. He could see them, could feel the sap rising. Another couple of days and it would flow. He would bet money on that. And here he was, just putting in the first of the spiles.

  A gruff voice startled him with a loud, “Hey.”

  He looked around fast. Billy Farraway stood not a dozen feet off. His boots were unlaced and planted wide in snowshoes of the ancient wood type. His jacket was undone, but at least he’d had the sense to wear a hat. Granted it was his hunter’s hat and cocked far back on his head. The old man would catch his death one of these days, Micah knew. Then again, he was a hardy old nut. He must have gotten the longevity in the family,along with the height. For a man who bent over most of the time, he was surprisingly tall.

  “Hey,” Billy repeated.

  “What’re you doing up here?” Micah asked gently.

  “Just taking a look.”

  “You should be down at the lake.”

  “I heard you were alone. You won’t finish in time if you’re alone.”

  Micah turned back to his tree. He drilled a second hole, well to the side and higher than the first, and tapped in the spile. He reached into his tool belt for fittings. “You shouldn’t be here, Billy.”

  “Because my brother forbid it? That was lots of years ago. Isn’t it time to let go of the past?”

  Micah snorted and muttered a facetious, “Maybe I could, if I knew what it was.”

  “You don’t know? You don’t know?”

  Micah didn’t—not about Heather, not about Billy.

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” Billy said, “because it’s time, it’s time. Your father imagined I was coveting his wife, and there was never any truth to it; we were just friends, but he was a jealous man. Know what set him off? I cried at her funeral. Hell, someone had to. You were in shock and Dale was angry—angry she had the gall to leave him, like she asked for that cancer. Once she was gone, he needed someone to blame, and there I was, her friend, like I’d conspired to disrupt his life. So he blamed me for that and for every other little dream he’d ever had that wasn’t about to come true. He blamed me, said I was no good, said he didn’t need me, said he’d shoot me on sight if I came up here again, so I didn’t. How long’s he been dead now?”

  “Eleven years,” Micah managed to say, though he was startled. He hadn’t heard this story. His father hadn’t been a talker.

  “And we’re still listening to him, you and me?” Billy asked. “Well, hell, you’re not. You bring me wood. You bring me clothes. You bring me food. And you say I can’t help here?”

  Micah did all those things. He had a soft spot in his heart for his uncle. Part of it had to do with Billy’s daughters, who saw their father as an old man who was backwoods simple and, as such, an embarrassment. Bothwomen lived in the city and rarely returned. But Micah’s soft spot came from personal experience, as well. Billy had taught him much of what he knew—had taught him quietly and gently, behind the back of the big boss, the tough boss, Billy’s older brother. Micah could remember laughing with Billy. He had never laughed with his father. Dale Smith had been a stern, impatient man with a need for domination.

  Micah had been grateful that the man hadn’t talked much, because what he said was dark. He hadn’t only been jealous of Billy. He’d been jealous of Micah as well.

  And Micah’s mother? If Billy had helped make her life more pleasant, then that was something Micah and Billy shared. Perhaps Micah had known of this bond on some unconscious level. Perhaps that explained the pleasure he took in providing for Billy.

  Now Billy wanted to do some sugaring. “I didn’t say you couldn’t help here,” Micah explained. “He did. He said it over and over again.”

  “Ay-uh. On his deathbed. I did hear that. But he’s dead, Micah. This all’s yours now, and you’d’ve done fine if your woman had been here, but she isn’t. You’ve told everyone in town that you don’t need help, just like Dale did. Only I know different. You’re never gonna get it done in time for first run if you don’t let someone help. Well, I’m not just someone. In case you’
ve forgotten, nephew, I’ve done this before.”

  “Not with tubing.”

  “So show me. I can learn. You won’t find anyone in town more eager for that than me.”

  Micah knew he was right. But it was like his father was still there, like Micah would be breaking a law, somehow desecrating his father’s memory.

  “Cripes, boy,” Billy finally said, “if you can’t do it because you need help, do it for me. Sugaring was my life for more years than I can count, and the maple moon brings it all back. I get this . . . thing in my blood, like it’s heating right up before the sap does. I’ve been here before, y’know. I come up every season and look around. Old Dale, he used to put four taps in a tree, and you’re right doing just two. You’re also right thinning things out. He resisted doing that, but I’d warrant your output is up. So, okay, you don’t want anyone in town knowing I’m here, I won’t tell.Wouldn’t want to spoil your image as a gruff guy like your dad. But let me help. I don’t have many years left. I want to do it again before I die.”

  * * *

  While Micah let one part of the past go and Griffin chased down another, Cassie called the Chicago office of Weymarr, Higgins, and Hack and asked for Jonathan Fitzgerald. His name was the one on the letter that Heather had stashed in her knapsack.Mr. Fitzgerald wasn’t in yet, she was told, and when she called back thirty minutes later, he was on another line. She didn’t want to leave a message, because she knew how some lawyers worked. Leave a name, leave the reason for a call, and at the end of the day they picked and chose which calls to return. For all Cassie knew, the DiCenzas had already gotten to Jonathan Fitzgerald.

  So, saying simply that she had a legal problem and doing it in the same secretive way that her own clients did all the time, she held the line.

  Ten minutes later, all business, he picked up the phone. “Yes. This is Jonathan Fitzgerald. Who is this?”

  “Mr. Fitzgerald, my name is Cassandra Byrnes. I’m a lawyer, and I’m calling on behalf of a client who needs your help.”