The playlist finished, and Tom rose to start another. “Let’s dance.”
“I’m not a very good dancer,” she threatened. “You might lose your feet.”
“I doubt that.” He took her hand and lifted her fingers to his lips.
Summer relaxed and let him lead while Lena Horne’s throaty voice wove a spell with I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good.The candle burned down, the floorboards creaked under their feet. She got Tom’s rhythm by the time Robert Goulet took them through If Ever I Would Leave You. She was boneless against him by the time Nat King Cole crooned When I Fall in Love, but it wasn’t until Doris Day started her version of Dream A Little Dream that she felt her heart utterly stop. Tom crooned the goodnight and kiss lyrics in her ear in a perfect- pitched baritone in harmony with Doris.
The deep-throated invitation was all she needed. Tipping her head, she looked up into the dark pool of his eyes and leaned into his kiss. To hell with playing hard to get.
££££££
Tom had been shot once, as a rookie in a domestic situation. Time had slowed, the moment stretched out like a ribbon blowing in the breeze. He remembered every sensation, every detail—the smell, the heat of the day, the colors, the pain. His life had changed at that moment, never to return to what it had been.
This kiss shifted his life-path, topping every other moment, good and bad. Summer’s mouth— something he only now realized he’d been dreaming about since Walter first showed him her picture— was eager, driven by an unfulfilled thirst. Yet, he felt her hesitancy, as if she was holding herself on the cusp of that life-changing moment to see if he fell too. And he was falling, zero to supersonic, into emotion-filled, “God this is better than I dreamed,” spectacular.
Her soft mouth shifted under his, and he pressed closer to her, trying to hold himself back from devouring her. His heart pounded sending a rush of sound to his ears, swamping, then collapsing his defenses. He drew her closer, absorbed her moan, and gave into the clawing need.
Darkness settled around them, the muted flicker from the burned-down candle nominal against the dusk. He would have swayed to the music, but he couldn’t hear it, didn’t care about anything but the woman in his arms.
Her hesitancy disappeared. She pressed against him, and every sense, every nerve rioted. Tom slid his lips away from her tempting mouth and across her cheek, absorbing the sweet smell. He stroked her back between the slender straps, touching the smooth texture of her skin there, marveling at the feel of her against him.
She moaned again, and maybe he joined her. He didn’t know where he was, but he knew who he wanted. Summer pressed soft hands against his face and forced his mouth back to hers. Whether she inhaled him or he inhaled her was never clear. She was either his Achilles heel or his salvation, and at the moment, he didn’t care which, as long as he could get her somewhere and get her naked.
A chorus of sirens broke the spell. A patrol car and an ambulance tore past, dual blasts breaking the night air like a fine flute glass, chilling the lust. He broke the kiss, yet held her against him.
He rubbed a hand down her back. “That got a bit out of control.”
She pulled away, one instant in his arms, the next on the other side of the table. She stared off into the night, her back rigid, her orange dress shifting in the breeze like a sunset beginning to fade.
A small shiver worked down her body. “I am leaving here,” she said, making it sound like a vow.
“I know,” he answered, walking up behind her, lending his warmth while trying his damnedest not to touch her.
He hadn’t been able to hear the iPod anymore because the music had stopped. They’d apparently kissed through two songs. The realization shook him. He took things slower, had more finesse, prided himself on his control. Maybe it would be better to walk away from this now before they both were hurting deep.
“Would you like me to take you home?” He sensed more than saw the hand that went to her mouth.
Finally, she answered him. “Yes, I think that would be best.”
“That statement usually means you want the opposite.” He settled his hands on her shoulders and rubbed. She didn’t pull away, confirming his theory.
“There is nothing here for me.” She turned then, right into his arms. “No offense.”
“None taken.” Not much anyway.
He continued to rub her shoulders, comforting certainly, but also thrilled at still being allowed close. “This was just a date. Not a prelude to a commitment. We ate. We talked. We danced. We kissed. All spectacular, but still it’s only once. Let’s keep this in perspective.” He heard himself say all that, hoping to settle her down, and knowing his statement for the lie it was. His worldhad changed, and he wanted what he couldn’t have.
She stood there, his hands on her, yet her head down, looking as defeated as he felt. “I’m a big girl, Tom. You don’t have to explain the kiss. I participated. I wanted to. That’s not my problem.”
“What is? No, don’t answer that.” He dropped his hands. “Let’s pack up dinner, blow out the candle, and I’ll take you home. I can kiss you goodnight on the doorstep and tomorrow we’ll both wake up and remember we had a great time. Time to discuss what your problem is after that.”
“No more kissing.” She shrugged away from him and stepped to wrap her hands around the back of her chair.
Tom hid his grin. Too bad. If he never had another date, another chance with this woman, he wasn’t walking away without kissing her again.
“We’ll see.” He let her have the space then, methodically packing their meal, disposing of the trash, blowing out the candle and folding the tablecloth. Summer stood, shoulders back, giving him a wary eye. He handed her the iPod, and switched hands with the picnic basket to extract his keys from his pocket.
On the sidewalk back to the truck, she loosened a tad. “Thank you for dinner. It was lovely.”
Lovely?
He couldn’t help it. He had to tease her. “You’re welcome. I had fun. Especially the dancing and the kissing.”
He expected her to huff, to give him another evil eye. Instead she laughed. “You don’t give up, do you?”
“See. We are getting to know each other.”
The drive back to her house was made in companionable silence, mainly because he started another Sarah Vaughn playlist and her bluesy voice serenaded them. He kept the volume up high enough so no conversation was necessary. She let him open her door, let him walk her down the sidewalk to the front porch, but was as nervous as a cat on a porch full of dogs.
The leaves rattled lightly in the breeze. The roses from the end of the porch smelled sweet and pungent in the night air. The yellow porch light was only a tad more effective than the table candle. Mrs. Patch still had her lights on across the street, though, and Tom knew for a fact she was probably watching out the window. The knowledge reinforced his control. He swooped in, cupping Summer’s face in his hands, and placed a lingering, tender kiss on her lips.
The kiss wasn’t at all satisfying.
“Sweet dreams, darlin’,” he whispered and walked away before she could sputter.
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Summer always dreamed in black and white. She’d had occasion to ponder that, but decided the psychological conundrum of being awash in color during her daylight hours sapped any that would be available for her to dream. Until tonight.
That stupid kiss.
She’d chucked her resolution to make him crawl to her and jumped him. It felt good, but the annoying voice in her head was hammering at her. Tom was a nice man who deserved a nice little wife. She was not nice or wife material. She was too centered on her art for that. She’d never contemplated being pregnant or baking cookies or keeping a man satisfied for fifty years or more.
Yet, the weight of being consumed by her art flirted with the heady fulfillment of being in Tom’s arms. The puzzle kept her awake well into the early morning hours when even the crickets stopped their chorus.
Fi
nally, she slept.
Only to dream of Tom in living techno-color in the midst of his parents’ garden.
He stood center, near their birdbath, the blue of his denim jeans vivid against the green of the ferns and the yellow of the gladiolas. He wore no shirt. The tanned, muscled skin stopped at a heavy silver belt buckle making her hands itch. Yet she stood at the patio door and let the colors, the teasing smile on his face, and the flush that rushed over her body thrill her.
She sat bolt upright in bed. “I have to paint,” she muttered. Whether she could hold the image long enough to get set up was the challenge.
She tore from bed, flipping on lights as she hurried to her grandmother’s sewing room and threw open the doors to the closet.
“Yes!” At the back of the closet, a three-by-five foot blank canvas leaned against the wall. She’d bought the materials with saved lunch money. She’d wanted to paint her grandmother’s garden as a memorial, as a good memory. She’d gone to the carpentry shop downtown and had made the frame to fit the canvas. Her grandfather had been furious when she’d lugged it home. That was the first of many arguments she’d had with him about her painting. The canvas had ended up in the closet, never to be used.
“It’s a fool’s dream,” he used to say. “You can’t support yourself with that kind of nonsense.” She had gone on to paint her grandmother’s garden—the one that had been over her grandfather’s bed at the nursing home. But that painting had been much smaller, an eighteen-by- twenty four inch canvas. The project had been done for Senior Art, that way he couldn’t argue with her about the supplies. .
She pulled the blank canvas out of the back of the closet, knocking over smaller frames and sewing boxes to get it out. Spools of thread and bobbins went every which way. She stepped over the mess and took the frame over to the window and went in search of an easel and her paints. She focused on each step, each need, afraid to revisit the memory of the dream until she was ready to paint. What if it faded? What if she froze?
“No! Not this time,” she promised herself. She pulled a small table over near the canvas and quickly prepped her brushes. Whether the prepping she’d done to the fabric so many years ago would hold, she couldn’t worry about now. If she stopped to do that again to be sure and waited for it to dry, she’d lose the image.
She picked up her brush, mixed the first colors, and let the dream wash over her.
And she started to paint.
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The morning sun washed over the canvas, and still, Summer painted. How long had she been at it? Her hands were cramping, yet she didn’t care. The flow was back again, the creativity, the thrill, the utter need to create this image.
A throat cleared in the doorway and Summer screamed a tight, high sound, slapping a paint splashed hand against her chest.
Jonathan was leaning casually in the doorframe, grinning like a drunken fool. “I rang the doorbell, knocked, finally broke the window in the back door.”
She raised a brow. “You broke my window?”
“You’re painting,” he countered.
She grinned back. “Yeah. I am.” Then she screeched and launched herself across the room into Jonathan’s arms. “I’m painting!”
He laughed, hugging her to him. “Must have been a hell of a date.”
She straightened and stepped back. A smudge of yellow was on his shirt, and she almost brushed at it, then thought better of it. “Sorry about your shirt.”
He shrugged. “Worth it. You should have more dates with this guy. Must have gone well?”
She sauntered back to the painting, judging the composition, the color palate. “I don’t kiss and tell.”
“Ah, so he kissed you.”
She dabbed at another spot that needed brighter color. “I think I jumped him.”
Jonathan’s full-throated laugh drew her back from the painting, and had her blushing. “I’m not saying any more.” She twisted her fingers in a lock and key motion in front of her mouth.
“You have no secrets from me, remember?”
“Why is that again?”
“Because you love me,cher. I’m your best friend.”
She was silent for a minute, and his grin faded. “What,cher? Quit over-thinking it. This isn’t some painting that needs the components analyzed.”
“It has nowhere to go. He’s not leaving here. He’s part of this place.” And she realized that from the dream, from the painting. He belonged here. “I’m not.”
“You don’t want to be. There’s a difference.” Jonathan answered, walking forward to study the painting.
“Exactly. I don’t want Echo Falls. I like San Francisco.”
“I think the world is a big place. You can paint, live, play anywhere and everywhere.” He reached to tip her chin up to him, waiting until her eyes settled on him to continue. “I think this is about something else, not Tom Applegate, and not your painting.”
She jerked her chin away. “I don’t make any secrets of the fact that my grandfather’s disapproval of my life’s work was a deciding factor for how I feel about this place.”
“Yeah, but there are a lot of other people here who influenced you, who helped you. Look at how many of your paintings are scattered all over town. They display your work—why again?” His gaze was relentless.
Summer felt a headache begin to pound between her eyes. She didn’t want to think about this now. “I have to paint. Go away.”
“Gladly, I will leave you to it. I’m meeting wonder-kissing-boy at the police department to discuss the forgeries, anyway.”
“He called you?” He hadn’t called her. At least, she didn’t think so.
“He left a message at the hotel.”
She mulled that over for a moment, then decided immersing herself again in painting was the way to avoid both her shattering feelings about her grandfather and her sensuous dead-end feelings about Tom.
“He left you flowers on the doorstep.” She jerked and stared at him.
He grinned, shaking his head. “No florist bunch for this guy. Looks like they were garden cut.”
Tempted. She was tempted to put her brush down and go check them out, see if there was a note.
“Paint,” Jonathan commanded. “I’ll put them in water.”
She heard him chuckling all the way down the stairs. The sound echoed in the hallway long after the front door slammed.
Torn, she turned back to the painting, another section demanding her attention.
The flowers could wait.These flowers would fade in her imagination if she didn’t hurry. Those would still be on the table as a reward when she finished.
And maybe she’d just have to kiss him for both the dream and reality.
CHAPTER NINE
Tom hung up the phone and stared at his notes. He'd spent an hour on the phone with the prosecuting attorney. No direction presented itself from the conversation. He’d also made arrangements for Bart to come tomorrow and change Summer’s locks.
Dana rushed into the day room. “There is one absolutely stunning piece of male flesh in the waiting area asking to see you.”
“You’re married,” he noted.
She fanned herself. “Yeah, but I still look and take the fantasy home.”
He grimaced. “Too much information. Name?”
“Uh…I forgot to ask.”
Tom grinned. Normally efficient Dana flustered was something blackmail-worthy. “About six-one, blonde hair, tanned, wears nice clothes?”
“Powerful jaw-line, killer green eyes, and a smack-me-down smile?”
“A smack-me-down what?” Tom held up his hands to ward off the image. “Never mind. I know him.”
“Do tell?”
“Nope. Send him back.”
“My next door neighbor’s sister-in-law saw you kissing some woman in the park last night.” She gave him a stern look. “Not a jealous husband is it?”
“No.”
She planted her hands on her hips in a huff, tapped her to
e and waited.
He leaned back in his chair and allowed a small smile. Meg won hands down at the worming-out game, although Dana ran a close second. She gave in when he continued to stare at her.
“You’ll pay for your silence, mister. Wait until I tell Meg.” She sashayed
back down the hall to the front desk.
Meg would know immediately who the kissee had been, and before Tom could say “wanted to do it again”, the whole family would be giving him the fifth degree. Maybe he wasn’t as good at thwarting Dana as he thought.
“Looks like weighty thoughts there.” Jonathan spoke from the doorway. He held a large binder under his arm.
“None worth repeating.” Tom rose to shake his hand. “Pull up a chair. I’d offer some coffee, but I can’t vouch for who made it.”
“I’ll risk it.” Summer’s friend dropped the book on the table, crossed the room, and plucked a disposable cup from the stack for coffee. He filled his cup to the brim, no additives.
An internal battle waged inside, gnawing on Tom. Finally, he lost the war. “So how’s Summer this morning? Have you talked to her?”
Jonathan gave a bark of laughter. “Painting, thanks to you.”
Tom forced himself to relax against the chair. A smudge of yellow stained the collar of Jonathan shirt meaning he hadseen Summer this morning. Tom tamped down a surge of jealousy. Gads, all he had to do was go back over there. He could kiss her good morning and get yellow on his shirt too, without all this angst. “Thanks to me?”
Jonathan turned, sipped his coffee. Tom waited for the grimace and didn’t get one. “Not quite Clem’s, but it will do.”
He could like this man, despite his three hundred dollar shoes.
Jonathan joined him, seating himself across the table. “She’s had a bit of an artistic block. Hasn’t painted anything decent in months. She is this morning. Looks like she’s been up half the night.”
Echo Falls, Texas Boxed Set Page 54
