by McNear, Mary
There were many other things in the box, too. Some silly—a cocktail napkin from the pub Gregg had taken Allie to on their first date in college—and some deadly serious—Gregg’s National Guard dog tags. But Allie made herself go through the whole box, examining every photograph and reading every letter and document.
When she was done, she felt exhausted. She put the items back in the box and put the box away, minus the photograph of Gregg and Wyatt. That she propped up on her dresser. Tomorrow, she’d buy a frame for it and put it someplace where she and Wyatt would see it often. Just because it hurt her to look at it didn’t mean it should be banished to a bottom drawer.
Then, Allie took off her wedding ring. Slipped it right off her ring finger and put it in her jewelry box, where she knew it belonged now. As she did so, she caught sight of herself in the mirror hanging above the dresser and was surprised to see that her face was streaked with tears. She hadn’t even been aware that she’d been crying.
She walked to the bathroom, splashed cold water on her face, and patted it dry with a hand towel. Then she ran a hairbrush through her tangled hair. After that, she went straight to her handbag, which was sitting where she’d left it on the kitchen table. It had everything she needed in it. Wallet, keys, and her brand-new cell phone, with local coverage, which she’d given Caroline the number to tonight. She checked to see that it was fully charged. It was. She turned it to ring, so she’d hear it if Caroline needed to reach her for any reason.
Then she turned the cabin’s lights off and locked the front door. She got into the car, turned on the ignition, and started driving. It was surreal how calm she felt. Not a flicker of anxiety. Not a twinge of nervousness. It was only when she turned into Walker’s driveway that she felt a little pulse of excitement. She parked next to his pickup, walked up to the cabin’s front door, and rang the doorbell.
Silence. Then footsteps. Then, after what seemed an eternity, Walker opened the door.
“Allie?” he said, surprised. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. There was rock music playing on a stereo in the background, and she could see a half-empty glass of red wine sitting on a nearby table. He looked like a man planning on spending a relaxing night at home alone. But he didn’t look disappointed to see her. Far from it.
“I’m ready,” Allie said, simply.
There were, she supposed, a million things he could have done at that moment, but what he did was smile at her, pull her into his arms, and close the door behind her.
CHAPTER 22
Where’s Wyatt?” he asked, wrapping his arms around her.
“He’s at Caroline’s,” she said, twining her arms around his neck and kissing him, full on the lips, without any inhibition.
He kissed her back for a few delicious moments. But then he reluctantly broke away from her and, holding her at arm’s length, looked at her strangely. As if he’d never seen her before.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, feeling a tiny flicker of anxiety. Her coming here tonight had felt so right to her. But what if it didn’t feel right to him?
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, reaching up and gently stroking her cheek. “I just can’t believe you’re actually here.”
“It’s okay, isn’t it?”
“Are you kidding?” he said. “I feel like I’ve won the lottery.”
She laughed.
“But, Allie, can I ask you something?” he asked.
She nodded and made a conscious effort to pay attention to whatever he would say next. She wanted him so badly right now that it was hard to concentrate on anything else.
“What happened? I mean, between the last time I saw you and tonight?”
“Nothing,” she said, simply. “Nothing and everything.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“I realized I was ready,” she added.
He reached for her hand and held it up to the light.
“No wedding ring,” he said quietly, running his fingers up and down her bare finger. She shivered. Even his most innocuous touch was enough to excite her.
“No wedding ring,” she agreed. “I took it off tonight. For good.”
“Are you sure about this?” he asked, giving her a penetrating look.
“Positive,” she said. “I’ll tell you all about it later. I promise. But I didn’t come here to talk.” Then, surprising herself, she went on, “At least not right away. There’s something else I want to do first.” And she kissed him again, just in case there was any doubt in his mind about what she meant.
He drew back again. Then he pulled her closer. “Now I really feel like I’ve won the lottery,” he said, nuzzling her neck.
She laughed. “Does that mean you’re going to invite me in?” she asked. They were still standing in the vestibule inside the front door of his cabin.
“Oh, yeah. Of course. I forgot,” he said, hugging her tightly and planting a kiss on her forehead. “I’m sorry. I’m not being a very good host, am I?” He led her, by the hand, into the cabin’s living room. There was a fire burning in the fireplace, she saw.
“Can I get you something to drink?” he asked.
“Sure. Whatever you’re having.”
He kissed her again and left the room. She wandered over to the fireplace, already missing him. When he came back, he handed her a glass of red wine, and she took a sip. It was delicious, but she wasn’t really in the mood for it. If there was one thing she didn’t need tonight, it was liquid courage.
She put her glass of wine down on the mantelpiece, and he took her in his arms again.
“The fire’s a nice touch,” she said, kissing his neck.
“Remember, I didn’t know you were coming,” he pointed out.
She smiled, and they kissed for a while. Bruce Springsteen played in the background, and a log occasionally cracked and popped in the fireplace.
Kissing Walker, Allie knew, was never an end in and of itself. The more they kissed, the more she wanted. Walker, apparently, felt the same way, because the next thing she knew, he’d placed a hand on either side of her waist and lifted her up. She wrapped her legs around his waist and tightened her grip around his neck, taking his tongue farther into her mouth.
Any self-consciousness she’d ever felt with him was gone now, completely melted away. Her only concern, in fact, as weeks of unwavering denial gave way to frantic desire, was that she couldn’t hold him tightly enough, couldn’t kiss him deeply enough, couldn’t feel every single inch of his body against every single inch of her body.
She plucked, impatiently, at his shirt, then tugged with equal impatience at the waistband of his jeans. It seemed unfair, somehow, that his clothes wouldn’t simply fall off like she needed them to. Taking them off, she realized, was going to be far too time-consuming.
“Allie,” he murmured, breaking away from their kiss and speaking into the hollow of her neck. “Allie, should I get some . . . um, protection?”
Protection? she wondered. Oh, of course. Protection. It had been a long time since she’d had to worry about that.
“I forgot all about that,” she admitted. “Can you . . . uh, take care of that?”
“Absolutely,” he said.
“That’d be great,” she said, pulling off his T-shirt and running her hands over his bare chest. But it better be close by, she added to herself. Because if I have to wait much longer, I think I’ll go crazy.
“And, uh, as far as my history goes,” he continued, obviously distracted by her hands moving greedily over his chest. “I haven’t been with anyone recently. I saw my doctor, too, at the beginning of the summer, and everything was fine. I think, when I saw him, I was hoping against hope that something might happen between us, and I wanted to be ready.” Running his lips along her earlobe, he added, “In retrospect, I think I might have been a little overconfident about the whole thing.”
“Not overconfident, it turns out. Just confident enough.” Allie smiled, pulling him closer. “And as for my history, Walker, it’s pretty simple.
Just Gregg. No one before him. And no one after him, either.”
Walker, surprised, pulled back slightly, and stared at her quizzically.
“Are you . . . are you saying that your husband was the only man you’ve ever been with?”
“Until now,” Allie said, unbuttoning the button on his blue jeans and marveling that Walker didn’t seem even slightly tired from holding her. “If it’s not too presumptuous of me to assume we’re going to make love tonight,” she added, kissing his neck.
“It’s not presumptuous,” Walker said, in a qualifying tone. “But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little intimidated by the fact that you’ve only been with one other man. Someone you loved so much. It’s a tough act to follow.”
“Don’t think of it that way,” Allie said, stroking his cheek. But Walker looked suddenly indecisive. She knew he wasn’t a man who typically suffered from a lack of confidence, not to mention paralyzing self-doubt. But she didn’t want him to overthink this, either. And she knew only one way to distract him. Fortunately, it was a pretty good way.
So she tightened her legs around his waist and kissed him again, taking his whole tongue into her mouth and sucking on it. Hard. He groaned and moved his hands down over her blue jeans back pockets, squeezing gently. Now it was her turn to groan.
He knelt down and laid her on the thick, soft living room rug in front of the fireplace, sliding his hands up under her sweater. “I was going to take you upstairs to my bedroom,” he said. “But I can see now we’re never going to make it that far.”
CHAPTER 23
You are so beautiful,” Walker said, wonderingly, propping himself up on one elbow and looking down at Allie. They were still lying on the living room rug, in front of the fireplace, and he was watching the way the fire’s shadows danced over her bare skin.
Allie started to disagree, but he silenced her with a kiss.
When he finally stopped kissing her, he looked at her skin in the firelight again and mused out loud, “What do you do to make your skin so beautiful? Dip yourself in liquid gold every morning?”
“That’s exactly what I do,” Allie said, a smile playing on her lips. “Every morning, as soon as I’m done brushing my teeth.” She groped for the sheepskin throw that she had pulled off the couch at some point during their lovemaking and wrapped it securely around her naked body.
Walker watched her, amused. “It’s a little late for that kind of modesty, isn’t it? Especially since the last two hours have given me such a . . . um, complete knowledge of your body. And Allie? Trust me when I say that body should never be covered up again. Not if you can possibly help it.”
Allie smiled but refused to relinquish the throw. “Are you suggesting that I stop wearing clothes?”
“Only when you’re alone with me,” Walker said, running his fingers through her honey-colored hair. “Because as much as I think Butternut’s citizens would enjoy seeing you naked, I’m too selfish to share you with them.”
Allie’s lips parted and her hazel eyes darkened, and Walker knew, instinctively, he could easily coax that sheepskin throw away from her now. But at the moment, as improbable as it seemed, his desire to talk to her was even stronger than his desire to make love to her again.
“Allie,” he asked now, still stroking her gold-highlighted hair, “was tonight different than you thought it would be? Or didn’t you think about what it would be like? Between us, I mean.”
“Oh, I thought about it,” she said, with a rueful smile. “Lately, to the exclusion of almost everything else in my life.”
He shook his head in surprise. So it had been that way for her, too?
“What about you?” she asked, almost shyly. “Did you think about it, too?”
“You have no idea,” he said, with a sigh.
“How close did tonight come to what you’d imagined?”
“Oh, I missed by a mile,” he said. He stopped stroking her hair and ran a single finger down her throat to the hollow at its base. She shivered. “My imagination failed me,” he continued. “I knew making love to you would be amazing. But I didn’t know it would be that amazing.”
She reached up to touch him now, stroking his cheek with the back of her hand. “I couldn’t say it any better than that,” she admitted.
“There’s only one thing I’d change,” he said, his finger leaving the hollow of her neck and traveling down to where a hint of her cleavage was still visible above the throw. She squirmed a little with some combination of desire and impatience, but she didn’t loosen her grip on it. Now it was her turn to want to talk.
“What would you change?” she asked.
“Well, when I imagined it, I always imagined carrying you up to my bedroom and making love to you in my bed. The way you deserve to be made love to.”
“Well, I’m not sorry it happened here,” she said, patting the rug beside her. “We couldn’t wait, that’s all. Besides, anyone can make love in a bed. That doesn’t require a lot of imagination.”
He smiled. Maybe she had a point there. There’d certainly been no shortage of imagination in their lovemaking tonight.
“Besides,” she said, glancing around the living room. “This room is very romantic. In a north woods kind of a way. Sort of masculine and seductive at the same time.”
Walker frowned. “You mean, like a bachelor pad?”
“No, I didn’t mean that—” Allie started to say, with a little shake of her head. But Walker interrupted her.
“Look, it’s important to me that you know something, okay?”
“Okay,” Allie said.
“With the exception of my ex-wife, who lived here for four and a half months, I’ve never brought another woman here before tonight. I know you didn’t ask, but I need you to know that. There was a woman I used to see, occasionally, in Minneapolis, but I haven’t seen her since I met you that day at Pearl’s. I called her after that and told her I couldn’t see her anymore. Not in that way, anyway. And since that was basically our whole relationship . . .” His voice trailed off.
“Walker, it’s okay,” Allie said gently. “I know you’re not some womanizer, if that’s what you’re concerned about. If you were, the gossip mill in Butternut would be running overtime. And you don’t owe me any kind of explanation, either. Not for anything that happened before tonight. I’m sorry if I put you on the defensive.” She reached up and kissed him lightly on his lips. “I didn’t mean to.”
He felt his tensed body relax. “You didn’t put me on the defensive,” he assured her. “I wanted you to know this isn’t something I do all the time. This is different. You’re different.”
“You don’t think I can tell that by the way you made love to me?” Allie asked softly, still stroking his cheek.
“God, I hope so,” Walker said, bending down to kiss her.
After a moment, Allie broke away from him, then asked with a mischievous smile. “Remember what you said about making love to me in a real bed?”
He nodded.
“Well, it’s not too late. You can take me up to your room now.” She peeled the sheepskin throw away from her body and flung it casually aside.
Walker swallowed. She looked so beautiful that it almost hurt to look at her.
“I would take you there,” he said, his voice thick with desire. “But I think we missed our window of opportunity again.”
His hand reached down and cupped one of her breasts, which was golden in the firelight, except for the pink, puckered nipple, which hardened immediately under the caressing touch of his fingers.
“The problem with going upstairs,” he said slowly, savoring the anticipation of making love to her almost as much as he knew he would savor the actual sensation of it, “is that it would take at least sixty seconds to get to my bedroom. And I can’t wait that long. Not anymore.”
“There’s no reason why you should wait that long,” she said, pulling him to her and initiating another round of lovemaking, the intensity of which left them both exh
austed and exhilarated at the same time.
They did eventually make it up the stairs to Walker’s bedroom. By then, the fire in the fireplace had burned down to a mound of glowing embers, and the sky was taking on the pale pink shades of early morning.
“It’s so peaceful,” Allie said softly, looking out at the mist-shrouded lake from Walker’s bedroom window. She had the sheepskin throw wrapped around her again, and her tangled hair hung loose on her bare shoulders.
“Come to bed,” Walker said, wrapping his arms around her from behind and kissing her neck in what he knew was an especially sensitive place for her.
Allie sighed, and it sounded to him like a perfect mixture of contentment and desire. She left the window and followed Walker to bed. There, they made love again, marveling at the delicious feel of the cool sheets against their bare skin.
Just as the sun was rising, Allie fell asleep. Walker knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, so instead he watched her sleep. She looked so young, he thought, her face relaxed in sleep, her honey-colored hair charmingly tumbled around on the pillow.
But in her own way, he knew, she was very mature. Far more mature than he was. Not only had she experienced more loss in her life than he had, but she’d had to assume more responsibility, too. Managing a successful business, as he’d done, was one thing. But being single-handedly responsible for a child? That was another thing.
He felt a stab of guilt then, thinking about how tired she’d be today. He could go back to sleep when she left. She’d have a whole day ahead of her with an energetic five-year-old.
So he resisted the urge to do what he wanted to do now—which was to run a finger down the inside of one of her thighs. The gesture, he knew, would wake her up immediately. And lead to more lovemaking. He had never been with a woman before whose body was so immediately responsive to his own touch. It was incredibly flattering. And deeply arousing.
He swallowed, hard, trying to rein in his own desire. They’d already made love four times, but he was still hungry for her. She’d reawakened his inner sixteen-year-old and brought him back to a time in his life when his sexual needs were seemingly inexhaustible and indefatigable.
