Yet all these years, Allison had thought him capable of...culpable for the most dastardly of behaviors.
Whatever shutters had dropped in Allison earlier at his foolishly uttered words were nothing compared to the slamming of a steel door in his heart at that moment.
She looked over at him, then sighed as she let her purse fall back to her side. “I don’t want to argue with you, Chas.”
It was his turn to remain silent. A part of him was still reeling from her unjust and false accusation. But the bigger part was just plain angry. As angry and hurt as the day she’d mocked him all those years before when he’d enthusiastically outlined their future together and she’d thrown it in his face.
He’d be double damned if he’d tell her the truth now. Loving her or not. Maybe she was right. Maybe he did love a pretty picture from the past. But she’d just shown him that what the past cast in concrete could be repeated in the future.
In the past, she’d flung his intentions to the wind and slapped him for having them. In the present, she’d ripped his admission of love into small, irreparable shreds.
“Can’t we simply let the past stay there and be just friends now?” she asked.
Big brother Chas, he thought bitterly. “Sure,” he said. “Friends.”
In his own defense, his misspoken admission, ill timed and hastily blurted out, had carried no expectation with it. It was simply and honestly the truth.
But he saw now that truth had many strange byways, and facts were far from representing absolutes. It was a fact that he’d loved Allison all those years before. It was a fact that he loved her now, however angry he might be with her, however unjustly she’d just accused him, no matter how long she’d misunderstood his motives, his nature. But those facts didn’t mean a thing when the truth was that fifteen years of pain lay between them. Fifteen long years.
“I...I’d better call Carolyn,” Allison said. “Unless the boys are going to stay here with you today, for community service?”
Chas thought it was one of the tougher things he’d ever done to push his feelings down—way down—and assume that loveless mantle of “just” a friend.
“We’d better call Carolyn,” he said finally, deliberately linking them by using the plural. “Because, like I told you, you’re not getting out of my sight. Not while someone out there wants to mess with your head. So that means Billy’ll have to go to Carolyn’s, too. And we’d better do it soon—a storm’s coming up. It’s supposed to be a doozy.”
A half hour later, Carolyn drove away with not just the triplets, but Billy, as well. And Chas stood beside Allison, waving goodbye and thinking that spending every waking minute with this woman he claimed to love would be nothing but pure, unmitigated hell.
And from the expression on her lovely face, he was fairly certain she felt the very same way.
He would work hard to vanquish whatever chased her, but he knew that in striving to free her, he was killing any dream of “them” as a unit, “them” as a couple.
Because if and when they discovered who was tormenting her, they would finally have to face the past. And that was something that would probably destroy them both. Due to the simple fact that he would never be able to apologize for the past. Because of Billy, he’d go back and relive every single second of the past fifteen years to spend them with Billy.
He was thankful when Allison pulled a few folded sheets of paper from her purse. She handed them to him silently and hunched her shoulders against the rapidly chilling wind.
He quickly scanned the list of dates and times she’d experienced her so-called mental aberrations. And read her list of questions. Then he read the whole thing again.
By the time he looked at her again, the anger he’d felt had faded, and the last tinge of it he relegated to a place behind that closed steel door in his heart.
“You spent Christmas in the hospital?” he asked. “Alone?”
“Y-yes,” she stammered, as if she were admitting to doing something wrong.
He thought of the friendly Christmases he spent with Sammie Jo, Taylor, even Alva Lu Harrigan. An Almost Christmas was about togetherness and family. Love.
The lock on that steel door felt molten hot in his chest. The thought of her being alone in New York, spending every Christmas without her family, without the warmth, the tenderness and the joy nearly caused him to swear aloud at the pain it brought him. The mental image of her in a hospital, lonely and scared, battered and hurt, gnawed at his very core.
“We’re going to fix that,” he managed to growl finally.
“What are you saying?” she asked, frowning up at him.
He took her arm and guided her toward his house, a square, one-story, ranch-style house adjacent to the clinic. At least he could channel some of the anger in a positive direction now. He had purpose. A mission.
“Today isn’t mobile-vet day. Any emergencies can reach me on the cell phone or in the house.”
“Chas...what’s going—?”
He swung her around and pulled her to his chest. Her eyes were wide. He didn’t think the startled expression had anything to do with fear, but he couldn’t read exactly what she was thinking. He still could see the strain on her face, but he could see something else now, as well, hope maybe, or perhaps it was only desire.
He lowered his lips to hers swiftly, surely, capturing hers with total command.
He thought she held still for a second in surprise, and possibly even in momentary resistance. You can’t love me, she’d told him in the clinic.
But he did. And even though the past was a time bomb waiting to explode any second, they had this moment, this present, and he was going to seize every blessed minute of it.
He turned her loose as abruptly as he’d grabbed her to him. Her eyes were slightly dazed, her lips parted and moist. He ached, physically ached to lift her up into his arms and carry her into his house like some knight of old.
Instead, he propelled her toward his house, keeping hold of her arm, half supporting her injured leg, a wild need to secure a corner of the present infusing him with energy and strength. And, whether she liked it or not, love.
“We’re going to haul out that holly and you’re going to have an old-fashioned Christmas,” he said, throwing open the front door of his home and guiding her inside.
She chuckled and let him push her through the doorway. “But it’s—”
“No ‘buts,’ Allison,” he ordered, letting the door fall closed behind him. He took her into his arms and kissed her soundly, deeply, thoroughly impressing the present on her, and in his mind and heart.
She sighed in response and then laughed a little. “You’re crazy,” she said.
He caught her to his chest, running his hands down her slender back, the curves at her waist, the fullness of her breasts. His kiss deepened still further, and he groaned as her tongue warred with his, her kiss mobile and strong, giving back as fully as she accepted.
He dragged himself to the surface and wrenched himself free of drowning in her enchantment. Today was her day. A Christmas present. The “present.”
She stared up at him with luminous eyes, a soft curve lifting her slightly swollen, thoroughly kissed lips. Everything in him demanded he sweep her back into his arms again, kissing her, making love to her, on the floor, on the sofa, he didn’t care where. But he only lifted his hand to her face instead and cupped it tenderly.
“This is your day, Allison. A day I’m not going to let you forget.”
Chapter 9
Allison thought the moment could not have been more perfect nor more memorable if she’d orchestrated every nuance of every second to impress it in her mind forever.
From a closet in the hallway, Chas hauled out box after box of Christmas decorations. When she tried stopping him, he only handed her another box and steered her toward the living room.
As she stacked the seemingly endless array of boxes, she caught glimpses of Chas’s life in his furniture, the paintings on the
walls, Billy’s school photographs in little bronze frames and the general clutter.
The furniture, styled in large solid pine with neutrally colored cushions, was sturdy and manly. The coffee table was also pine and of a simple, mission style. It held newspapers and a couple of veterinary magazines in addition to a pile of Billy’s corrected homework.
The curtains were nubby and thick, another neutral tone shot with flecks of brown. The pillows on the sofa picked up the brown and wove it through the room. It was a man’s room but with tasteful, thoughtful touches. It was a home.
She contrasted it with her apartment in New York, sparsely decorated, clean, light, empty.
“This is the last of it,” Chas said, hauling out a huge box and plunking it on the floor. “The tree itself.”
“Chas, this is silly,” she stated, knowing it was but still longing for it in some part of her soul.
“Yep,” he agreed cheerfully, opening the large box and pulling out and undertaking the assembly of an eight-foot blue spruce look-alike.
He’d obviously put the tree together many times, for he deftly manipulated limbs and staves so that it became a tree in a matter of minutes. Standing in the corner of the room, it looked so real and so fresh that she could almost smell the rich scent.
Chas sorted through the boxes and opened one with a grunt of satisfaction. He pulled out a stack of old albums and handed them to her. “Here, you take charge of these.”
He pointed over at a recess in the wall where the stereo presumably rested. For a moment, staring at his pointing hand, she felt the ragged edges of panic threatening to seize her. But she forced herself to follow his finger’s direction and turned to look for the record player.
Who even had albums anymore, let alone a stereo to play them on? she wondered. Obviously, Chas Jamison. Fighting the fear his pointing finger had engendered, telling herself it was only some strange impulse triggered by her subconscious, she resolutely thumbed through the albums in her arms.
Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Anne Murray, Tina Turner, Dolly Parton, Lena Home and so many other artists singing Christmas carols old and dear. An eclectic collection united by a single theme. She turned to look at Chas, busily engaged in winding a long strand of small lights around the tree.
This was a side of him she’d never have dreamed existed. A wholly sentimental, childlike quality infusing his concentration on the tree. He was doing this for her, she thought in some awe, even as some dim portion of her mind knew he was also doing it for himself.
Half the gift isn’t in the receiving end, she knew. It was in the act of giving itself. Of sharing. And he was sharing something private and special to him. His music, his tree, the small treasures he’d accumulated over the years. He was presenting them to her out of season, out of rhyme, but with joyful, enthusiastic determination.
A day for her to remember. What a remarkable gift to proffer a woman suffering from spot amnesia.
She pulled out an Andy Williams album and settled it on the spotlessly clean record player. On top of it, she slid Bing Crosby and then Kenny Rogers, and followed his renditions with a Glenn Miller Big Band Christmas. She smiled a little as they poised in seeming midair, ready and waiting.
She depressed the switch, and the first record fell to the already spinning dais. She watched as the arm lifted and moved to delicately rest the needle on the grooves. Christmas bells tinkled in the background, and pianos and clarinets heralded the rich, mellifluous voice of Andy Williams calling out his “Joy to the World.”
Behind her, his hands spanning her waist, Chas started singing along, a rich, slightly off-key and raspy baritone. A sudden and wholly unexpected stab of happiness pierced her and made her feel hopeful for the first time in months. True hope, rare and precious. She turned to embrace the moment and the man who was giving it to her.
She told herself that whatever he’d said in the clinic and whatever she’d answered back didn’t matter at the moment. Because this moment wasn’t in the regular flow of time.
Unlike his nearly forceful passion in the doorway to his house, the fierce demand of it outside, he slowly, gently ran his hands down her hair, her shoulders and arms and back again.
His rich brown eyes met hers with utter warmth, complete tenderness. A light smile played on his full lips.
She thought again of his words, of her own, while in the clinic, then ruthlessly shoved them from her mind. He was giving her Christmas, a day out of time. She would accept it for what it was and not let it be clouded by the past, by bitter feelings of hurt or pain. She would accept it in the spirit it was being given, wholly and openly, not coloring it with outside interference and doubts.
As if he read all this on her face, he leaned forward to press a kiss to her forehead, slowly, gently, and lingered there a moment, making a silent vow or a promise, the kiss its seal.
He lowered his lips, and his tongue teased her lips apart, tickling her a little, tasting of coffee and his own unique flavor. He teased her lips with his own, then trailed feather-soft kisses along her jawline, making her sigh as he followed the kisses. with his fingers, as if blurring them into her skin.
She snared his slowly moving forefinger with her lips and sucked lightly, drawing him into her mouth, flicking him with her tongue. She reveled in his sharp intake of breath and gasped herself as he caught her earlobe between his lips and tugged gently.
Strangely she felt no divorce of rationality in her mind. She was giving in to the day, the moment. There were no conflicts between “should” or “shouldn’t.” One didn’t question a present of this magnitude; one could only accept it or decline it.
And she was accepting it. Every bit of it. This day was hers now, the first that was truly hers in months. Maybe years. She would savor every taste, touch and smell of it. She would luxuriate in the oddity of the music, the strangeness, the singular elements of Christmas in February, and mostly she would, on this rare and memorable day, prize the man giving it to her.
When he cupped her breast with a strong, warm hand, she pressed into him, letting him know the extent of her acceptance, her desire for him. And when he slipped his hand beneath her sweater to have closer contact, she arched back to encourage his quest. And when he released the clasp of her brassiere, she moaned a little as he caught her full and aching breast in his hand.
This time Chas knew no barriers would be raised between them. He hadn’t planned for this, had harbored no such hopes for it, but he wasn’t a fool, either, and all twelve of the lords a-leaping combined with the eleven pipers piping couldn’t make him stop now. Only Allison had that power and she was leaning into him, her body pressed tightly to his, her breast heavy and full in his hand.
He’d wanted to sweep her up and into his arms earlier, had wanted to whisk her across the threshold into his home, but had held back. There was nothing to stop him now, and he knelt swiftly and lifted her up and cradled her against his chest.
Her arms slipped around his neck, helping him distribute her weight, but not stiffening for escape or struggling to be set down. Instead, she raised her face to him, eyes nearly closed, lips slightly curved into a somewhat dreamy smile. He lowered his mouth to hers, tasting again her moist desire.
Without saying anything, not wanting anything to shatter the moment, he turned and stepped around boxes until he’d crossed the room and carried her to his bedroom.
As Andy Williams began singing “Silent Night,” Chas lay Allison upon his bed and stretched out beside her. She looked up at him, her lids heavy, her breathing slightly rapid, her lips parted in invitation, a request he confirmed immediately.
Perhaps because the song in the other room was sweet and soft, slow and lilting, so were their embraces, their kissing. Chas felt their bodies already assimilating a rhythm, long and deep, passionate yet tender, as each reached out to the other in mutual recognition of the yearning thrumming between them.
And as that song ended and Andy Williams began singing of chestnuts roasting on an o
pen fire, the flames sparked between them and a deeper blaze ignited. And by the time Williams worked to “We Three Kings,” Chas couldn’t hear the music anymore; his ears were ringing with the sound of Allison’s soft sighs and his own heartbeat.
He helped her free of her sweater and pushed her silky bra from her dewy skin. He took one pert and hard nipple between his lips and tugged at it, making her sigh and cup his head in her hands. As he laved her puckered aureole and teased her nipple with his tongue, she moaned aloud and gripped her hands in his hair, pulling it somewhat. He grazed the rock-hard pebble with his teeth, and she squirmed beneath him, holding him to her with her trembling hands.
His own fingers released the catch of her jeans and tugged the zipper open. He could feel the heat rising off her and suckled with greater alacrity as he slipped his hand between her jeans and silken panties, shucking the jeans from her lithe hips.
He abruptly released that nipple and swiftly caught the other with his mouth, drawing it between his lips to meet his flickering tongue. Her hands ran through his hair, alternately. pulling him to her and caressing him in deep, hunger-driven strokes.
The feel of her soft, satin skin, knowing she wanted him fully, maddened by the desire to rip the remaining obstacles free so that he could plunge into her served to steady him, to make him linger over each small pleasure. He loved the contrast in texture between her silken undergarment and the slightly scratchy feel of the denim jeans. He savored the rocklike hardness of her nipple and the velvety softness of her full breasts. He lingered over the stiff curls pushing up at the loose undergarments, teasing her by running his fingers ever so lightly across the wisp of a barrier.
Had he ever wanted a woman this much, this hungrily? Once. It was perhaps no irony that it was the same woman. He shoved the fifteen-year-old memory from his mind. That was one contrast and comparison he didn’t want to consider at the moment. This was the here and now, the glorious and perfect present, and he wanted no shadow of the past to interfere with it.
Almost Remembered Page 13
