Lightning That Lingers

by Sharon

  Rubbing the back of his forefinger gently up and down the wind-pinked length of her nose, he asked, "Have you recovered from your exposure to the show the other night? Maybe I should say, from my exposure to you."

  She choked.

  "It didn't appear to be exactly your cup of tea," he said. "What's your name?"

  "Jennifer Hamilton." The sound of her own name brought her abruptly to her senses, or at least what she hoped were her senses. The wall behind her hampered a dignified retreat, so she jerked herself sideways to escape his hands and almost collapsed backward over the log cabin. His firm grip cradled her waist, steadied her, then released her, and he took one step backward, too.

  His expressive gaze lit briefly on the Lincoln fund drive poster. "Are you a librarian?"

  "Yes," she said tersely, her confusion narrowing into a harried wariness.

  "I have such fantasies about librarians. If I'd known that last week at the show..." His voice was soft, his half-smile slow, direct. "Why wouldn't you let me kiss you?"

  Draped against the bricks, waiting impatiently, the man in the suede coat had begun to develop a smirk. Pitiless. They were both pitiless, spoiled, much-sought-after macho hunks who were finding some sadistic entertainment in tormenting an awkward, bashful girl. But this shaken victim was not as defenseless as she seemed. Why wouldn't she let him kiss her? he had asked.

  "I thought it might not be a good idea," she snapped. "I'm allergic to penicillin."

  The words were not meant to be friendly, but as these things always happened, they sounded considerably worse aloud. His bright gaze held hers, never wavering. He even smiled. And when the man in the suede coat said, "Does she mean?..." he answered in an even tone, "She's afraid I might give her a social disease."

  The words were light, ironic rather than bitter, betraying none of the private sentiments beneath. The smile had grown wider, infinitely more dangerous, when he said, "Don't worry, Jennifer Hamilton. They give me a patch test once a week. So this is going to be perfectly safe." A dollar came out of his jacket pocket, and before she had guessed what he was going to do, he had tucked it into her waistband.

  "A donation," he said. "I give kisses for them—do you?"

  Instinct warned her before he moved to take her, and she was stumbling backward when his hands closed on her shoulders and drew her close. She could feel the hard lineup of their thighs, the crush of her belly and breasts against his yielding Jacket that tightened to their shape. Her gaze was caught helplessly in his, lotus petals swirling in a blue floodwater, and she was paralyzed everywhere. Her respiration grew shallow, a faint warm pressure against lips parting slowly in wonder at the caressing expectation flowering within her. And she knew that in spite of everything she wanted him, wanted this kiss. His hand was moving gently around her neck, moving upward, cupping and tilting the back of her head, his fingers spreading deliciously through her hair. Ermine-soft in cashmere, his little finger stroked dainty tremors into her spine.

  His mouth descended to hers with throat-stopping languor, his eyes holding her entranced until his dark-tipped lashes drifted closed, veiling the brightness. And her eyes closed too, and as his breath swirled lightly with hers, she took a quick, fearful inbreath, and then in the darkness felt his lips come against hers, hardly touching. Her heartbeat hammered in her throat, in her head, and she let his tightening grip press her hips into his thighs and she burned there, and on her mouth where he was pressing the cool satin of his lips. His breath warmed her cheeks and chin as his tongue followed the modeling of her lips before touching into her mouth with gentle force. And through her body she could feel the scoring heat of it as his hand pushed up on her lower back and bottom, making her slide against him.

  When at last he pulled back from her, her numbed gaze wandered over his face, the vivid eyes, the mouth, deliciously damp from her. His hand, which had been cupping the back of her hair, slipped underneath her jaw, cradling her chin.

  "Jennifer Hamilton," he said softly, framing both words as though he were committing them to memory. "You're not going to make this easy, are you?"

  Then she was released. As the trance began to shatter around her, she saw in a bewildered way that a straggling crowd had gathered. Next to the hunk in suede stood a third man with dark curling hair and gray eyes. His hands were thrust into his ribbed leather jacket.

  "The things I miss by being last to cash my check," the stranger said, directing a droll smile at Philip. "I don't know what in the name of heaven that was about, but it looked damned unpatriotic." He scooped up the stovepipe hat that Jennifer hadn't even realized had fallen from her head, and after subjecting it to a dubious examination, set it gently back on her hair. "When she's not head of state, is she someone?"

  "She's someone. Her name is Jennifer Hamilton,"

  Philip said, smiling at the gray-eyed man, beginning to walk beside him toward the street. "And I'm going to make her a happy woman."

  The gray-eyed stranger turned instantly and gave her a look full of humor and delight, and began to laugh. The man she knew only as Peter the Policeman fell in beside them, and she emerged from the final abrupt stage into reality, into a hurricane of fury.

  "Not going to make what easy?" she said, the words passing quietly through kiss-numbed lips. She continued to stare idiotically after his retreating figure. Then she repeated, quite loudly, "Make what easy?"

  He turned halfway across the street and said, "Us." And she watched him walking backward, gazing at her, until "Peter" took hold of his arm and said plaintively, "For God's sake, Philip, will you be done with that weird chick? What's gotten into you? It's damned embarrassing."

  It might have been the audacity of a man who made his living taking off his clothes describing an encounter with her as embarrassing. It might have been the emotional aftershock of the kiss. Or it might have been the certainty that again the blond stripper had made a spectacle out of her. But Jennifer Hamilton, coming to the end of her rope, dashed her hat on the ground and thought, Damn you! You're never going to make me a happy woman! Do you understand? Never!

  He had vanished into the crowd.

  Long habits of dignity caused her to bend slowly and retrieve her hat, looking neither to the left nor right. Shaken, yet steeled, trying her best to pretend that nothing had just happened and that no one around her had noticed a thing, she turned back to her equipment to make the unsettling discovery that she must have dislodged the smoke mechanism on the log cabin when she had tripped against it. It had been puffing vigorously throughout their embrace. Pride made her remain at her post with a frozen countenance.

  It may have been her imagination—but had the contributions picked up a little?

  CHAPTER 3

  Walking through her front door later, stripping off the frock coat, Jennifer realized that his muffler was still curled around her neck.

  It wasn't until noon the next day that the conviction she was a wronged woman began to waver.

  By that evening she was facing the unsettling truth. She had overreacted to mild teasing from an extremely attractive man who probably spent the better part of his days in enthusiastically requited flirtations.

  Midnight found her watching M*A*S*H reruns and feeling wistful.

  The mood persisted throughout the next day, and while she fought against the lowness, it seemed to be growing up and around her. Apprehension tore at her, and that was foolish because nothing was going to happen to her. A chance meeting, a few challenging words thrown out by a man in a temper, a kiss. It had happened, but now it was over. Let the regrets and the sting of it go.

  But the internal disquiet became strain. She was nervous as she locked up the library Monday night. There was no reason to be nervous, of course, even though she was alone, because Eleanor Paynter was outside, warming up her Gremlin for their shared ride home. But the building seemed desolate in the dim glare of the security lights. Somewhere in the back reaches of the stacks a display book collapsed with a sharp crash and Jennifer
jumped. Half smiling at her private display of nerves, she moved more quickly than usual through the litany of tasks. Turn the "Open" sign to "Closed." Make sure the cash drawer was locked. Unplug the coffee pot. Turn down the heat. Double check to be sure the front door was locked. Unlock the overnight book drop—discovering an accidentally locked book drop seemed to bring out the ferocious in people. She'd seen them leave books on the library's front steps in a rainstorm.

  She hurried to the back hallway, dragged her camel stadium coat from the hook and zipped it on quickly, fumbling for the brown tweed mittens from the pocket and pulling the matching cuff hat down over her hair and ears.

  The bitter cold outside made her clench her muscles and stamp her feet as she engineered the heavy locks on the service door. Somewhere behind her an engine ran reassuringly. She turned, expecting to race toward the Gremlin. But the Gremlin was gone.

  Spent light drifted over the library walls from a distant streetlamp and the reflected gleam of the three-quarter moon on the frozen lake beyond carved out an area from the darkness, like a barely lit stage. And within that stage she saw that the only car in the desolate lot was an aging station wagon. And leaning on the front of it, one leather boot up on the bumper, was the man in the cream-colored parka whom she had seen wearing so much less. She turned to ice in her tracks. Seeing her, he shoved off the bumper and walked toward her.

  Unsteady pulses thumped in strange places inside her body but she'd made a resolution the night before while she was brushing her teeth that never again would she let any man back her against a wall. Looking frantically around for Eleanor, she heard herself utter, "Mrs. Paynter..."

  "Eleanor left when I told her I was here to pick you up. She wasn't averse since she was rushing home to catch 'The Maltese Falcon' on cable."

  The attractive voice was matter-of-fact, the stance relaxed. His moonlit features revealed no nuances. Trying to cope with the reality of his sudden appearance, she took one hard sustaining breath, feeding oxygen to her poor besieged brain. Okay, brain, what's going on here? His casual use of the head librarian's first name and his just-as-casual reference to Eleanor's plans for the evening were such a severe check that she could only falter, "Eleanor left? Just like that?"

  The sensual features seemed to soften as he studied her. "You've been abandoned to the wolves, darling. She didn't so much as hesitate. It helps, of course, that she's known me since the days my eyebrows didn't reach the top of the checkout counter and I was signing out picture books in crayon."

  The inside of her mouth and her throat were bone dry and stinging in the cold air. She tried to swallow and couldn't. "You just... lied to her?"

  "No." His smile entered her senses like wine. He moved closer. "I do want to pick you up. You might as well resign yourself and come along passively."

  His strong fingers took hold of her upper arm, propelling her toward the car, and she yelped, "Now see here...."

  "I intend to. But not until you're sitting in the car." Amusement edged the easy voice. "I don't want you to freeze the end of your stuck-up little nose."

  Though she didn't quite struggle, alarm made her stiffen as he bundled her into the passenger seat of the station wagon, and she was breathing in jerky little gasps as he climbed into the front seat beside her.

  "You can't push me around," she said, somewhat inaccurately.

  "Oh yes I can. As a matter of fact, I'm probably only one of a long line of people who can push you around."

  She made a noble attempt to pull herself back together. "I have my moments. Of courage, that is."

  "Yes indeed." He shoved the key into the ignition and turned to face her, one long shapely denim-clad leg resting on the driveshaft hump. "If you recall I was treated to one of them on Saturday. It was very impressive."

  Her gaze had wandered somehow to his mouth, and a strange feeling began to float inside her. She looked straight at him. "Is that why you're here? Do you plan on doing something horrible to me for revenge?"

  A touch of his hand turned on the overhead light, shutting the world outside to a distant blackness, shutting her in a flare of glossy yellow light with this utterly beguiling stranger. His face was tilted slightly as he studied her, a slow smile teasing at the corners of his blue eyes. One of his hands rested on the steering wheel, the gloved fingers strong and classical in their grace as they curved along the line of the black plastic. He stretched out his hand to rub his index finger once gently under her chin.

  "If that's the best fight you can put up when you think something horrible is about to happen to you, I'm going to enroll you in est. Do you know what's in front of us?"

  Her heart had given up its weak effort to do anything more than syncopate, and all she knew how to do was handle this strange thing that was happening to her one moment at a time. She pretended to squint out the blank front windshield before she said,

  "A dumpster?"

  The smile widened briefly. His eyes searched her face. "I scare you, don't I?"

  "I can't help it. I wasn't born with much of a backbone. Congenital defect. Go ahead, though —I'm braced. What have we got ahead of us?"

  His eyes had become very bright. "A long night."

  "And?" she said with acute apprehension.

  "I'd like you to spend it with me," he said gently.

  With a low moan, she slid downward in her seat, pulling the brown tweed hat down to cover her entire face. She heard his laughter and the changing purr of the engine as the car moved in reverse, dipping into the street. They traveled down Lake Drive. His hand came to her shoulder and rubbed lightly.

  "It doesn't matter," he said in a kind tone, "there are other ways to do these things. For example, we could date, if you think that would be reassuring."

  Jennifer thought, I'm dreaming all of this. Her voice, muffled by the hat, said, "Date?"

  "Date. That phenomenon of human group behavior where you devote a goodly amount of time to wondering what to wear and fixing your hair and I empty the McDonald's cartons out of my car and we both make sure we've had showers and sprayed ourselves with all the appropriate chemicals that the advertising industry assures us we can't do without. We dig up clean sheets and underwear and make sure they don't have any suspicious stains, just in case that's the—I beg your pardon?"

  "Nothing." Muffled voice. "I moaned."

  "You do that a lot."

  "Only around you."

  "It's a promising sign," he said. "Where was I?"

  "Sheets and underwear."

  "Right. Then I pick you up, or we can meet some place if we're trying to be correct and modern, and try to find some way to behave like ourselves and impress each other at the same time. You try not to disagree with my opinions too often so as not to risk bruising the legendary male ego. But you don't want to agree too often either or you might bore me. You know, if you smother under that hat I might find it a little hard to explain."

  "Dump my body by the roadside and leave no fingerprints," she advised him, pulling up her hat. The cold air against her hot skin stung. She took a sideways glance at his profile, stark and stunning in the sparse light from the dash. "Go on. While I'm trying to navigate the ticklish straits between being either a threat or a bore..."

  "You're also thinking, Lord, is this dude going to make a move on me tonight?—which is an important question because you don't want to give in to me too soon because even in this day and age, the double standard is alive and well, though more subtle. On the other hand, if you wait too long, you run the risk that I'll get tired of waiting and move along. In the meantime, I try to figure out when you're ready on the basis of what are probably some very mixed signals." Braking for a stop sign, he turned and gave her a smile that could have baked bread at twenty paces. "So, do you wanna date?"

  Dangerous. Oh, this man was dangerous. He was smart as well as beautiful. What a combination. Someday they were probably going to make him president of something. Of all the men she could have so carelessly thrown down the gaunt
let toward, she couldn't have chosen worse. Rubbing the slow, erratic pulse in her throat, she tore her gaze from his and stared out the window at a landscape of dark trees, cold sidewalks, and shadowy snow-covered lawns lit in patches by lattice patterns from the television screens that flickered behind drawn curtains.

  "You are aware," she said shakily, "that there are a couple of people left who still consider dating a romantic institution?"

  "Yes. That's why I'm willing, if it would make you feel more secure."

  There was no way on God's green earth that she would ever feel secure within ten miles of this man. She tried to inject some of the frost that twinkled on the side windows into her voice. "Just what do you believe in, Mr.—"

  "Brooks. Philip. I believe in a lot of things. Do you mean concerning you?"

  I can't take it. I can't take it. "Yes."

  "I believe in your ruffled hair on my pillow. I believe in your breath on my skin, and in holding your flushed body—"

  "Uncle!" she gasped. "Uncle, uncle! Please." She propped her elbow against the car door and dropped her reeling brow into her mittened palm, but her head came up sharply as she realized that the houses had been replaced by a deep silhouette of wind-gnawed trees and dark blue open fields. She turned toward him in alarm. "Where are you taking me?"

  "I'm just driving. You haven't told me where you live."

  "Oh." She was beginning to feel like a total idiot. "The Victorian Cottage apartments."

  "Okay. We can turn ahead."

  For an uncertain moment, she studied the smooth flowing hair, the chaste purity of the bone structure, the brilliant eyes. The quivery feelings in her chest persisted. Then she turned forward, watching the road, haloed in the apricot headlight reflection.