by Anne Brock
* * *
Beep, beep.
The sound of a car horn cut through the early morning stillness, and they both stiffened. Lib lifted her head, staring down into Luke's deep brown eyes.
Beep. Bee".
"That's my ride," Luke realized. It was nearly five-thirty, and the limo driver had arrived, ready to take him to the little local airport. He closed his eyes, swearing softly. "Lib, I don't want to go. I'll tell the driver I won't be needing him today."
Lib sat up, surprise in her eyes. "Luke, you can't be serious."
He pushed himself up on his elbows. "Sweetheart, I'm damned serious."
"You've been waiting three weeks for this meeting," she said. She lifted herself off of him.
"I've been waiting longer than that to make love to you," Luke countered, reaching for her and holding her close. "Now that I have, I'm not going to just get up and run out of here."
The limo horn honked again.
"Luke, please," she said, wiggling free from his arms. She sat next to him on the bed and pushed his hair back from his face. "If you don't go to the meeting in Boston, your deal could fall through. I'd never forgive myself."
"To hell with the deal," Luke said, leaning forward and kissing her.
Lib closed her eyes. It would be so easy to give in. He would go and dismiss the limo driver, and they would spend the rest of the morning, the rest of the day and probably most of the night right here in her room, in her bed. But eventually reality would return, and Luke would come to realize all that he had given up.
No, it would be a mistake.
She pulled away from him. "There's no way I'm going to let you stay," she said. "My God, Luke, before we got sidetracked, you were telling me just how important that land is to you! No way am I going to let you jeopardize your plan to buy it back."
"To hell with the land," he said, reaching for her again.
But she stopped him. "You don't mean that, and you know it," she said, her violet eyes serious. "Go to Boston. I'll be here when you get back."
She could see the uncertainty in his eyes, and she climbed out of bed, collecting his clothes from where he'd thrown them on the floor. She picked up his suit jacket, turned the sleeves right side out and brushed it off. "Maybe you should shower," she said. "I'll put on a robe and tell the driver you'll be right down and—"
"No," Luke said. He stood up and went into the adjoining bathroom, but he didn't turn on the shower. When he came back out, he pulled on his shorts and then his pants. "If I'm going, I'm going with your scent still on my body. I'll shower tonight. When I get back."
Lib handed him his shirt. She smiled at him. "What time will your flight get in?"
"Five-thirty," he said, slipping his arms into the sleeves. "Earlier if I can, and believe me, I'll be trying." He shook his head with a rueful laugh. "I can't believe you're standing here naked, and I'm leaving. "
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her, running his hands up and down her bare back. Lib laughed and tried to button his shirt. "You're making this difficult," she said. "The driver's going to leave."
"No, he's not," Luke countered. "He's fifteen minutes early. He's going to sit there the way he always does, and drink his coffee and eat a donut and wait for me to come out."
Lord, she was beautiful, and not at all embarrassed by the fact that she was still naked while he was nearly dressed. He couldn't resist, and his fingers found the warm, slick area between her legs. "I want more," he said, his voice husky. He could feel his body responding, hardening, as if he were some seventeen-year-old kid. She moved against him, and he groaned. "Liberty, how can I leave?"
She kissed him and her mouth tasted like paradise.
"If your plane gets in at five-thirty," she said, "I'll see you at six." She smiled as she gently pulled free from his hands. "We can celebrate the sale of your video stores."
Luke was silent as he watched her cross the room and slip into an old-fashioned-looking silvery-grey silk robe. It covered her, but it clung in all the right places. If anything, she looked even sexier. She crossed the room, holding out his tie.
"Let's go out to dinner tonight," he said, tying it around his neck and tucking in his shirt. Damn, was he going to have an erection all day? Funny, he'd thought making love to Lib would relieve some of the pressure he felt. Instead, it made it worse.
"Pizza or the Inn?" she asked, leaning closer to adjust the knot in his tie.
"The Inn," he said. "Let's get dressed up. I want this to be special." So what if it was a few weeks early. He'd ask her to marry him tonight.
"You want me to make a reservation for dinner?" she asked as she led him out of her bedroom and down the stairs. Her smile turned decidedly wicked. "At, oh, say, ten o' clock?"
Their gazes locked as Luke grinned back at her. "Yeah," he managed to say, his voice husky. "That sounds just about perfect."
Chapter Nine
At five-thirty, as Lib was putting the finishing touches on her makeup, the telephone rang. She put the top back onto her lipstick, and answered the phone after the second ring.
"Hello?"
"Lib, you're not going to believe this, but I'm still in Boston." It was Luke, and he didn't sound happy.
She slowly sat down on her bed. "What went wrong?" she asked quietly.
He laughed, but there wasn't a trace of humor in it. "What didn't go wrong?" he said. "We've been negotiating since nine-thirty, and I still don't have a clue as to what these guys really want. If I knew, I'd be more than willing to give in — simply for the sake of getting the hell out of here."
Lib looked at her reflection in the mirror of Harriet's vanity. She was wearing her black dress — the one she used to wear as a movie extra for party scenes — the one Luke had liked so much. And she was actually wearing panty- hose. The gleaming black silk made her long legs glimmer, and the black leather of her high-heeled pumps gleamed in the late afternoon light.
"I'm sorry," Lib said.
"I am, too," Luke said. There was silence for a moment, then he said, "Lord, you don't know how much I want to be home right now."
Lib smiled. "Yes, I do."
She heard him take a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Damn," he said. He sounded so tired and discouraged.
"I loved what we did this morning," Lib said softly.
Luke didn't say anything, not at first, but she could almost feel the sudden electrical energy crackling through the telephone wires.
"Yeah," he said huskily. "I did, too."
"I'm glad we waited," she said, "but I'm also glad that we finally stopped waiting."
"I should be kissing you," Luke said. "I should be taking off your clothes, not preparing for another damned meeting."
"I love the way you feel inside me," Lib said. "And when we move... oh..."
Luke groaned. "Lord," he said. "Are you trying to kill me?"
"And your mouth," Lib said. "The way you kissed me... I've been thinking about kissing you."
All over. She didn't say the words. She didn't have to. But the image it brought to mind was excruciatingly delicious. "You're torturing me," he said.
Lib laughed. "Think of it as anticipation," she said. "Or incentive to close this deal and get back here soon."
Luke sighed. "I wish," he said. "The real bitch of the situation is that I'm not sure when I will be back. We've got a dinner meeting scheduled tonight, and Rich thinks it'll run into the early morning. I've got a room reserved at the Adam's Mark Hotel, if you need me."
"I need you," Lib said, her voice husky, "but I can wait."
* * *
Rich Lowell frowned at Luke across the breakfast table. "You can't be serious."
Luke pushed his half-eaten omelet back from the edge of the table, eyeing it with distaste. "I can't remember the last time I've been more serious," he said, taking a long swallow of his tepid coffee.
"You gonna eat your bacon?" Rich asked hopefully.
Luke waved the uneaten food on his plate away, an
d Rich reached for it. "You're not eating enough," the lawyer noted, for the first time looking Luke over carefully.
The man looked like hell. Slumped in his seat, nursing a cup of black coffee, Luke looked more like a refugee than a man working to unload a pair of very healthy video stores in an economically undepressed part of New Eng-land. His eyes had smudges of black underneath them, as if he'd slept very little during the past three days of negotiations. His handsome face was lined with fatigue, and he pressed the heel of one hand to his forehead as if he had a headache.
"If you leave now," Rich said, using a strip of bacon to point in Luke's direction, "you can kiss this whole deal good-bye."
"They're not gonna buy," Luke said flatly. "We're wasting our time."
"Give it another twenty-four hours," Rich said. He looked back at Luke's barely touched omelet. "You want me to order you something else?"
Luke shook his head. He'd already looked. Liberty Jones wasn't on the menu.
* * *
Luke sat on the hotel room bed, telephone to his ear, listening to the electronic ringing. He'd packed up the extra shirts and underwear he'd been forced to buy when he realized he'd need to stay over in Boston more than one night. The inexpensive overnight bag he'd picked up was sitting next to the door. He let himself sink back onto the bed, lying flat on his back as, all those miles away in Sterling, the phone continued to ring.
Brenda picked it up on the sixth ring, out of breath. "Yeah, I'm here, I'm here," she said. "I was outside in the garden."
"Brenda."
"Luke! Did you close the deal?"
Luke closed his eyes. "No. It fell through."
"I'm sorry," she said. "Can I help?"
"You have ninety thousand dollars I can borrow?"
"I wish I did—"
"Damn it, Brenda, I was so close," he said, then took a deep, steadying breath. "What are my chances of selling either the pizza place or the ski shop before next Friday?"
Brenda couldn't hold back a skeptical laugh.
"That good, huh?" Luke said.
"Giving me six business days to sell a piece of real estate is hardly realistic," she said.
"Yeah, I know," he said. "But give it a try, will you? And can you do me another favor? Can you run over to Lib's, give her a message for me? I tried calling her, but she didn't answer. She's probably working outside, and she doesn't have an answering machine. See, I won't be home until Wednesday at the absolute earliest. Rich got a line on a couple of guys down in Texas who might be interested in the video stores. Tell Lib I'll call her as soon as I know where we'll be staying. And tell Lib..."
"Yes?" Brenda prompted.
Luke stood up, putting the base of the telephone back on the nightstand. He looked out the window at panoramic view of the city of Boston. "Tell Lib," he said again. What? That he ached for her? That he burned for her? That he wanted her more than he'd ever wanted any other woman in the world?
Or maybe that he loved her?
No, he hadn't said those words to her yet, and he wanted her to hear them directly from him, and in per-son, too.
"Tell her with any luck, I'll see her on Wednesday."
* * *
Lib was nearly finished painting the trim of the house when she saw the cloud of dust that heralded the arrival of a car on Forest Road.
Luke, she thought, with a surge of excitement that quickly turned to disappointment when she realized the car in question was a sporty station wagon, not an airport limousine.
As she watched from her perch on the ladder, the station wagon pulled into her driveway. The engine was turned off, and the sudden silence was broken only by the quiet ticking sound of the engine cooling. Then the front door opened, and Brenda Fulton stepped out.
Luke's sister was wearing tailored pants and a matching jacket with a crisp white blouse underneath. She shielded her eyes against the bright sun as she looked up at Lib. "Hi," she called out.
Lib unhooked her leg from the ladder and climbed down, carrying her paint bucket and brush in one hand. "Hi," she said, when she reached the bottom. She set the paint down on the grass and wiped her paint-splattered hands on her cut-off jeans. "This is a surprise."
"Luke called me," Brenda said, noticing the light of hope that leapt into Lib's eyes.
"Is he on his way home?" the younger woman asked eagerly.
Brenda made a face. "Sorry, hon," she said sympathetically. "He wanted me to tell you that he's going to Texas."
"All the way to Texas?" Lib couldn't hold back a laugh of dismay. "Oh, poor Luke."
"He's not a happy camper," Brenda agreed. "He says he won't be back until Wednesday — best case scenario."
Wednesday? Today was Sunday — three more days with-out him. Lib sighed.
"Can you come inside?" she asked, starting up the steps of the freshly painted porch. "I could really use a glass of lemonade — how about you?"
"Sounds great," Brenda said.
Lib held the screen door open, and Brenda followed her into the house.
"Good grief, you've been busy!" Brenda said, looking around.
The wooden floors were polished to a rich glow. The walls were freshly painted and the woodwork around the doors and windows gleamed. Brenda peeked into the living room. The walls had been papered with a pleasant flowered print from the chair rail down and painted a soft shade of white up to the ceiling. The sun shone through the leaded glass in the windows, making the room light and airy. The French doors that led into the dining room had been repaired and the beautiful oak wood restored.
"You can look around if you want," Lib called out from the kitchen, and Brenda went through the living room into the dining room.
Lib had replaced the broken tiles that ornamented the fireplace, and she'd polished the rich Victorian paneling on the walls. Big bay windows kept the room from being dark, and the sunlight made the wood gleam.
A swinging door led into a narrow pantry area. Cabinets hugged one wall, along with a thick white marble countertop and a large ceramic sink with shiny new fixtures.
Another swinging door led Brenda into the kitchen — and what a kitchen!
The room was enormous, with a huge beam running down the center. One entire wall was exposed brick, with a huge fireplace set into it. The rest of the kitchen was modern, with a working island in the middle. The cabinets were anew, white and sleek, and gleaming appliances were strategically placed around the room.
Lib stood at the counter near the refrigerator, pouring them both a glass of lemonade. She handed one of the glasses to Brenda.
"This is terrific," Brenda said, gesturing to the house around her.
"Yeah," Lib said with a smile. "I'm almost ready to move the furniture back in. There's one more room on this floor that needs new wallpaper. And one of the bedrooms on the second floor really got trashed from that hole in the roof — I've gotta get carpeting for that room. I can't afford to replace the hardwood floorboards. And I haven't done more than clean the third floor. It's really just an attic, but I loved it up there when I was little, so I wanted to make it into a sort of a rec room."
Brenda was looking at her with an odd expression on her face. "How many bedrooms does this place have?" she asked.
"Five," Lib said, turning to pour herself another glass of lemonade. "Six if you count the room downstairs."
"Bathrooms?"
"Two upstairs and a half down here," Lib said. "Why?"
"I know some people who are looking for a vacation house," Brenda said. "They want it ready to move in to by Thanksgiving, but I happen to know they intend to pay in cash, so if they found the right place — like this house — they could probably be persuaded to close within the next few days."
Lib was shaking her head. "No," she said. "I don't want to sell."
"I could probably get you two hundred and fifty thousand," Brenda said bluntly. "That's enough to pay back Luke and give him a big enough return on his investment so he can buy back the land from Ken Avery."
> Lib was silent.
"You don't need two houses," Brenda said. "If you're going: to marry Luke—"
"Who said anything about marriage?" Lib asked with a laugh.
"I know he's going to ask you," Brenda said. She smiled at Lib, her dark eyes so like her brother's. "It's just a matter of time."
Lib turned away and looked out of the kitchen window. The view from where she was standing was wonderful. She could see the backyard and the path that led up to the pond. The hillside beyond it was heavily wooded, and in the distance mountains loomed.
She would do just about anything to help Luke, but sell her home? Yet Brenda's words made sense. They certainly wouldn't need two houses. If they were going to get married...
"I hate to dump so much pressure on you," Brenda said, "but I have an appointment to take these people out looking later this afternoon. There's a house they want to see over in Chester. It's not as nice as this, but...-
Lib kept staring up the hill. "What did Luke think?"
"Luke?"
She turned around to face Brenda. "About me selling this house," she said.
Brenda shook her head. "Luke doesn't know," she said. "I didn't think of it myself until I saw how great your place looks."
"I want to talk to him about it," Lib said. "Did he leave you his phone number?"
"No, he wasn't sure where he'd be staying," Brenda said, "or even when he'd get there."
Lib was silent. She loved this place. How could she just go and sell it? A decision this major needed a great deal of careful thought and discussion. How could she just make an on-the-spot decision like this?
"Why don't I bring these people by," Brenda suggested. "They can look the property over. If they're interested... "
"All right," Lib said. "But if you hear from Luke again, tell him I need to talk to him."
* * *
Luke stood by the airport pay phone, willing Lib to hear it ringing from wherever she was outside. As it rang for the eighth time, Rich tapped him on the shoulder.
Luke looked up.
"We gotta get going," Rich said. "Or we'll miss our connecting flight."
Luke hung up the phone, but didn't follow Rich. Instead, he closed his eyes and let his head rest momentarily on the privacy guard that separated his phone from the one next to it. He wondered where Lib was, what she was doing. He wondered why the hell he was standing, exhausted, in the middle of the Atlanta airport, about to board a plane for Corpus Christi, Texas, when all he really wanted was to go back to Sterling. Back to Liberty's sweet smile and warm arms...
