Heart of Dixie

by Tami Hoag

  When the moment had passed, when she had endured the worst of the pain, she turned to him. She went into his arms and pressed her cheek against his chest. Now she needed his comfort and he gave it without reserve, wrapping her up in his warmth and solid strength.

  “I miss her so much,” she whispered, setting off another torrent of tears.

  “I know, baby,” Jake murmured into her hair.

  He held her and rocked her, staring into the fire. It tore him up to hear her cry, to know that she blamed herself for her friend’s death. All along he had suspected something was haunting her, but he had never guessed it would be anything so terrible, so wrenching as this guilt. He could feel it twist inside him as surely as if it had been his own. He would have done anything to take it away from her, but there was no way to do it. She clung to it and punished herself with it, at the same time trying to make amends by taking in misfits and outcasts and imperfect creatures. He had nothing to heal her with but time and love.

  He tilted her face up and kissed her tears away. He gave her his handkerchief. She blew her nose, wadded up the previously immaculate white linen in her fist, and let her head fall against Jake’s shoulder as her breathing calmed down. He brushed her hair and kissed her temple.

  “We can’t live other people’s lives for them,” he said, thinking not only of Dixie and her friend, but of himself and his father.

  “No. But sometimes it would make life a whole lot easier.”

  “It seems to me we’ve got our hands full just trying to run our own lives.” He ran his hands up her rib cage and filled them with her breasts. Gently kneading the plump globes, he gave her a playful little smile and waggled his brows. “I’ve certainly got my hands full.”

  Dixie smiled as his teasing coaxed a giggle from her. He really was a good man, a good friend. He had allowed her her grief and now he was tugging her gently away from it, wooing her back from the past and into the present. Jeanne was a memory never to be forgotten, but reality was Jake, with her here and now.

  A low sound of pleasure hummed in her throat as his fingers massaged her breasts, his thumbs rubbing across the tips. She leaned toward him as he lowered his mouth to hers. It was the softest of kisses, warm and tender and sweet. It drew up her hunger for life and chased away the darkness of her memories. It offered her understanding and comfort and invited her to celebrate life rather than mourn death.

  She wound her arms around Jake’s neck and pulled herself up onto her knees. He turned onto his knees as well, never breaking the kiss or the caress. She met his tongue in a play that drifted back and forth from being lazy to eager. She ate up the taste of him, thinking she could never get enough if she lived to be a hundred.

  His fingers left her breasts, moving to the buttons on her flannel shirt. He popped them free and tugged the tails from her jeans. His hands were cold and Dixie shivered as he touched her, stroking her sides and her tummy. Shivers raced through her, pooling in the pit of her stomach.

  He struggled for a second with the front catch of her bra, then it gave way and she gasped into his mouth as her breasts spilled into the cool air and his cool hands. Despite the chill of his touch, the feel of his long fingers squeezing and petting stoked the fire in her blood until she was panting.

  She tugged impatiently at his shirt, needing to touch him, to feel her skin against his, to press her body to his. But he held her at bay when she would have moved up against his bared chest. She ran her hands over him eagerly, loving the feel of taut flesh and rippling muscles. She traced her fingertips over his pectorals and drew her thumbs across his flat male nipples, delighting in the way the flesh pebbled beneath her touch. She tried once again to bring herself up against him, but he held her back, his hands still cupping her breasts.

  Dixie pulled her mouth from his and trailed kisses down his chest. She drew her fingertips along his waistband, smiling at the way he sucked in a breath each time she dipped inside his jeans. His belly tightened as she traced circles around his navel and toyed with the metal button just below.

  Bending down, she pressed her open mouth to his stomach and popped the button of his jeans. She worked the zipper down, easing over the straining bulge there. She followed suit with his briefs, slipping them down, teasing him, stroking him until his whole body was shuddering. Chuckling wickedly against his belly, she closed one small hand over him, caressing him with the gentlest of touches.

  Jake drew in a sharp breath, his nostrils filling with the salty musky scent of the sea and arousal. He squeezed his eyes shut and tangled his fingers in Dixie’s hair and massaged the back of her head, concentrating on the pleasure. Her breath was warm and moist against his groin, her lips like wet silk. He groaned and shuddered again, his whole body trembling as if the ground beneath him were moving in a violent quake. He struggled to hang on to his control as it shimmied through his grasp.

  Unable to stand it any longer, he grasped Dixie by the shoulders and hauled her up against him, nearly crushing her in his embrace. She let out a grateful sigh as flesh pressed to flesh and he slanted his mouth across hers for a hot, hungry kiss. He wanted to consume her, to absorb her—each part of her, body and soul and secrets. The need to possess, to claim, to mate overwhelmed him. His hips rocked against Dixie’s, but all he met with was the frustrating scrape of soft denim against his flesh.

  Trailing kisses and nips down her throat, he reached down and wrestled with her jeans, dragging them down along with her silk and lace panties. He slid one hand between her thighs, threading his fingers through the soft nest of dark hair, seeking the moist warmth at the heart of her femininity. She lifted her hips, moving restlessly as he stroked and teased. His left hand swept down her back, over her jacket and the tails of her flannel shirt to the ripe curve of her bare buttock. He pulled her toward him as he slipped two fingers into her satiny heat.

  Dixie cried out, her breath coming in pants and gasps. She clutched his shoulders, moving against him, needing, needing, needing. She whimpered and rubbed her head against his jaw.

  “Oh, Jake, please, please, please,” she panted. “I need you inside me. Please don’t make me wait.”

  He growled in her ear, nuzzling through her thick hair to nip her earlobe. The velvety crown of his arousal nudged her belly and she brought a hand between them and tried to guide him. In the blink of an eye she was on her back on the blanket, with Jake looming over her, his blue eyes gleaming hot and dark.

  “I want you, Dixie,” he murmured, his voice a low husky rasp. “All of you.”

  She shivered as she looked up at him, knowing that he was asking her to lower the last of her barriers, that this would go beyond the joining of their bodies. He would become a part of her as she had allowed no one to become a part of her ever. She shivered again, not from the chill of the wind against her bare skin, but from the fear within her. She wanted him in her heart, in her soul, and it terrified her to need another person so badly. Old hurts had conditioned her against letting anyone that close and still she wanted Jake. That had to mean it was right, didn’t it? That had to mean she was safe, that he was the one man who would take her heart and not break it, love her as she was and cherish her, didn’t it?

  She closed her eyes and prayed that it did. When she opened them and stared up into Jake’s intense, waiting gaze, she said, “Yes.”

  Jake took in her answer, everything inside him going as still as the eye of a hurricane. He had promised himself he wouldn’t push her, wouldn’t drag from her what she wasn’t ready to give. Still he had asked her to give him everything, not because he needed to master her, but because he loved her. Love was a humbling thing; it stripped away pride and control. He loved Dixie and wanted nothing more than for her to love him in return.

  He looked into her eyes now, wide and clear, and saw everything he had hoped to see—love and need and hope. There was uncertainty there as well, and vulnerability, and they tugged at his heart.

  “Love me, Jake,” she whispered, her lips moist and
trembling slightly. “I love you.”

  Relief flooded through him in a cool tide. He brushed his mouth against the curve of her cheek, smoothed her hair back with his fingertips. “Oh, baby,” he murmured. “You don’t know how I needed to hear you say that.”

  He kissed her lips, her chin. He pushed aside her jacket and shirt and kissed the tip of each breast, kissed the soft flesh below her navel and kissed her hips. With quick and gentle hands he divested them both of jeans and shoes. He stroked his hands down Dixie’s legs, enjoying the silkiness of her skin. He ran his fingers over her feet, marveling at how small and dainty they were, how delicate the bones. He raised one and kissed the arch, trailing his tongue up to the sensitive hollow just behind the ankle.

  Dixie lay back, watching him, absorbed his care and attention. He kissed a tiny mole on the inside of her knee as reverently as he kissed her lips, with as much passion as he gave her breasts. His hands stroked over her as if she were a priceless sculpture and he was memorizing every detail with his fingertips.

  He parted her thighs and kissed her deeply, intimately, his tongue stroking and probing. Flames of desire leaped inside her, burning away patience and focusing her attention on the need that throbbed through her like a physical pain. Her back arched off the blanket and her fingers clutched at Jake’s hair, tugging.

  He reared up over her then, lifted her hips and filled her with a single thrust, pushing, pushing until she gasped. He brushed his lips against the shell of her ear, saying, “All of me, Dixie. I want you to take all of me, everything, and give me everything. I love you.”

  She breathed his name and tightened her fingers on the hard muscles of his back. “Yes. Yes.”

  They made love slowly, intensely, watching each other’s eyes, concentrating on each sensation. The sky darkened to purple and the sun sank like a flaming ball, spreading fire across the horizon. The ocean roared and hissed.

  Dixie felt completion rushing toward her as powerful and urgent as the surge of the sea, and in one corner of her heart, in the last bastion of her fear, she tried to hold it off for a moment, afraid of the power of it, afraid of what would come after. But it was beyond her strength to prevent it and the last wall of her defenses fell, battered down as wave after wave of sensation consumed her. Jake strained against her, his body rigid, a groan rumbling deep in his chest. He clutched her to him with a fierce embrace and Dixie answered him with one of her own, squeezing him tight, her heart pressing to his.

  After a long moment he raised his head and looked down at her, brushing her hair back from her eyes, his expression tender but watchful. He was waiting for something. She could sense it. But she was too spent to try to figure out what it was. She let him look into her eyes, let him see everything she was feeling.

  Finally he gave her a little smile and said, “I’m freezing my butt off. When did it get so cold out here?”

  “It was always cold. We were just too preoccupied to notice.”

  She flipped the edge of the blanket over him. He rolled onto his side with her in his arms, wrapping them together. “Yeah, I guess I had my mind on something else, like how much I love you.”

  “Why, Mr. Gannon, you have such a way with words,” she drawled, batting her eyelashes in a perfect imitation of a debutante at a cotillion. “You ought to be a writer.”

  “You think so? I was thinking maybe I should do something with my hands,” he said, winning a giggle from her as he tickled her. He sobered and kissed her, tenderly, deeply. When he lifted his head again he looked as serious as she’d ever seen him. “Dixie, I think we need to have a talk.”

  Panic coiled in her stomach. She had committed herself. She had promised him everything she was, everything she had been, but the prospect of telling him now made her shiver. She would tell him, she swore to herself, she would. She just needed a little more time to prepare, that was all. She had revealed much of her past already. She didn’t think she had the strength for anything more today.

  “Not on an empty stomach,” she said, finding a smile for him. “I’m starved, aren’t you?”

  Jake sighed and sat up, letting the blanket pool at his waist. “Yeah,” he murmured. “I’m starved too.”

  Starved for the truth. Dixie had promised him, but she was reneging now that the passion had come and gone. She was pulling back from him. It hurt.

  “Don’t be mad at me, Jake,” she begged, sitting up beside him.

  Her eyes were wide and smoky in the firelight, more golden than brown. They begged eloquently for understanding, for time. He caught himself cursing her for being such a damn good actress. She could twist his emotions into knots with nothing more than a look, a subtle nuance of expression.

  She put a hand on his arm. “Please don’t be mad. I know we need to talk. I just don’t want it to be right now, okay? Everything has happened so fast. Let me catch my breath. We can talk ourselves hoarse tomorrow if you want. Just not tonight. Please?”

  The tears were his undoing. He felt like a cad for pushing her even though he knew full well he hadn’t pushed very hard or for anything unreasonable. He loved her. He deserved to have her tell him the truth. He wanted everything to be settled between them so they could forget about the past and look to the future. But those damn tears did him in. His resolve crumbled like a sand castle.

  He gave Dixie a hug and kissed the top of her head. “So you’re hungry, huh?”

  “Famished.”

  “For food?”

  She gave him a throaty chuckle. “For the moment.”

  ELEVEN

  DIXIE WOKE BY slow degrees, her body sated, her mind numbed by the pleasant fog of dreams and memories of the night before. She burrowed deeper under the covers, her head nestling into a plump down pillow that smelled like Jake—warm, clean, masculine. She pulled the sheet and quilt up to her chin, sighing and smiling.

  They had dined on the beach wrapped in their blanket and sitting as close to the fire as they dared. The picnic supper Jake had brought had consisted of cold breast of chicken, garlic bread, and a pasta salad he had made himself. They had shared a small bottle of white wine and fed each other bits of fudge, devoting much time to licking fingers and nibbling crumbs off each other’s lips. Dixie had crowed over getting Jake to eat sugar and Jake had crowed over getting Dixie to eat a meal that hadn’t been dunked in animal fat and fried to a crisp. They had declared the match a tie.

  The ride back to Mare’s Nest had seemed to take forever. As the weather changed, the sea grew rougher. Dixie’s little boat had bobbed like a piece of driftwood. She had been forced to devote her attention to getting them back in one piece when all she had wanted was a leisurely trip with plenty of time to look at the stars and enjoy the motion of the water. As it turned out there had been no stars and the motion of the water had been enough to make a seasoned sailor queasy.

  There was bad weather coming in from somewhere. The wind had howled during the night and she could tell by the chill on the end of her nose that the temperature had fallen considerably. She turned, thinking to cuddle up to Jake, but he was gone. She vaguely remembered his kissing her forehead and slipping out of bed, saying something about his morning run. The man was a fanatic. She was definitely going to have to work some more on getting him to slow down and relax. This was one morning he could well have forgotten jogging and gotten his exercise in a much more enjoyable way.

  Dixie stretched and smiled and burrowed down into the bed again. They had driven back from the marina to find Tyler Holt’s pickup parked behind her house and the lights on in the attic windows. Without a word they had turned down the path and walked to Jake’s cottage, dogs and cats trailing after them, only to be shut out on the porch.

  She wondered if Delia and Tyler had cleared the air between them. She hoped so. She wanted her cousin to be happy. She also wanted her house back. Jake’s bed wasn’t nearly as comfortable as hers, a fact she could overlook while he was in it. When he was in bed with her she wasn’t aware of anything but heat a
nd pleasure and loving him so much she thought her heart would burst.

  She sat up now and leaned back against the pillows, drawing her knees up and pulling the blankets to her chin. Gray light fell through the window like thick mist. Through the glass she could see the ocean was the color of granite, pitching with whitecaps, spitting foam against the shore. The sky hung down low, the leaden clouds rolling, their swollen bellies looking ready to burst. The sand of the beach was as white as bleached bones in comparison.

  Abby hobbled nervously along a short stretch of beach with a stick in her mouth. She didn’t like storms and was as good at predicting one as any meteorologist. Bob Dog watched her with a quizzical expression, bowing and prancing, trying unsuccessfully to entice her into a game. Three of Dixie’s cats sat on the porch rail, lined up like milk bottles, their tails twitching.

  There was no sign of Jake, but she knew he was out there, his long powerful legs eating up the shoreline, the wind in his hair, his intense blue eyes fixed on a distant point. How he had any energy left after last night was beyond her. All she wanted to do was stay in bed and cuddle with him for the rest of the day. She felt supremely lazy but forced herself to get up just the same.

  She had put Jake off on the matter of their heart-to-heart, wanting more time to prepare herself. Now she thought about her plan for the morning, the nerves in her stomach doing a tap dance.

  She would set the scene carefully. First she would shower and dress—her jeans and one of his shirts. Nothing remotely glamorous because she wanted the emphasis to be on who she was now, not who she had been. She would make a pot of coffee and bring over some of the cinnamon rolls she had baked the day before. And she would make wheat toast to appease his sense of nutrition. She would let him shower and dress and then they would sit down at the table and she would simply tell him.

  It was no big deal. Being Devon Stafford had been a job and she had left it. Jake had been in the Marine Corps and he had left it. Same thing. She would reveal all, get it over with, answer his questions, and then they could get on to the next phase of their relationship.