by K. T. Tomb
Robin held her while she released what had been building up for a very long time. Though he had always been uncomfortable around crying women, he discovered that, in that particular instance, he found himself rejoicing. The thought of her finally being able to let go of what must have been years of stress and tension as she tended to her Nana and Buelo by herself brought tears to his eyes as well.
“But you said that I had two positions,” she reminded him, looking at him with red eyes.
“Well, the second one is sort of an optional one.”
“I will probably have enough with the first, but tell me about the second one.”
“The second is a much more esteemed position.”
“Okay?” Again, she wrinkled her nose.
Seeing her doing that made him want to stretch it out a little bit longer, but he mercifully decided to let her off the hook.
“The second would be the position of wife for the CFO of Thorn Industries.”
It took her a moment to draw the connection, but when she did, her eyes lit up.
“You are asking me to marry you?”
“I am.”
“Si, yes, mi Amor, un mil veces, yes!” She kissed him all over his face and lips and clapped her hands with joy. “I can hardly wait to tell Nana and Buelo!”
“Speaking of, unless we get started in the shower, we’re going to be late for dinner with Nana, Buelo and the rest of the familia.”
“Oh. I think we have time for a little something else,” she purred. She moved from kissing his face and worked her way down his body to where she could focus her attention on his groin area.
Looks like we’re going to be very late for dinner.
The End
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THE QUIET STORM
Sacred Thorns #3
by
K.T. Tomb
The Quiet Storm
Published by K.T. Tomb
Copyright © 2018 by K.T. Tomb
All rights reserved.
Chapter One
Stone Mountain,
Georgia, 1978
The house was never silent, even at night.
Rae tossed and roused from her sleep, awakening to the pitch darkness of the room. They slept in a four poster mahogany bed that John had rescued from a plantation house in southern Louisiana the previous year and had restored. He’d given it to her as a present for their second anniversary. It was grand, but it had no bed curtains; Rae always thought that beds with canopies and curtains were too gaudy.
As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she could make out John’s sleeping figure beside her in the bed. His tousled raven hair was a dark cloud against the white linen covering the goose down pillows. She sighed at the sight of him, feeling safe and contented. She heard the grandfather clock in the downstairs hallway striking six o’clock and sighed. It was time to get up and get ready to start the day.
Quietly, Rae got out of the big bed and donned her slippers and a robe, leaving the room without a sound. It was painful to leave John there fast asleep at this hour of the morning. In their early years, they had always woken up together. Memories of their favorite ways to start a day sent a shiver through her body as she stepped carefully into the shower. They had made love most Saturday mornings until noon without being disturbed. But not on Sundays, and today was Sunday. They would have their usual lazy morning around the house, then the staff would leave for their day off while Rae and John went to church and then to the country club for the day.
In her dressing room, Rae rubbed lotion on her arms and legs, then perfumed her soft, smooth skin, brushed her masses of auburn curls and put on her stockings and a black sheath dress before stepping into her shoe closet. She slipped her feet into her favorite Louboutin pumps and went downstairs. She went through the hallway briskly. From the sound of it, someone was knocking on the doors of the maids to let them know it was time to get up. The house was already springing to life and as she neared the kitchen, she could hear Mrs. Newland speaking to the kitchen staff. They were busy getting everything ready for breakfast.
“Good morning, Mrs. Newland,” Rae said, announcing her entrance.
“Oh, good morning to you, Mrs. Thorn,” she replied without looking up from what she was doing.
As was her custom, Rae started to prepare John’s morning tray which Mr. Bowman, the butler, would take up to him at 6:30. She placed all his favorites on it; strong Columbian coffee in a silver pot accompanied by the morning newspaper, which he loved to read in bed. As soon as she was finished with the tray, Mr. Bowman walked into the kitchen.
“Good morning, Mr. Bowman,” Rae greeted chirpily. “Is Mr. Thorn awake yet?”
“Good morning, Mrs. Thorn,” Bowman replied. “Yes, he’s up. I’ve just opened the bedroom drapes and laid out his suit for church.”
“Thank you, Bowman. Here you go; his coffee is ready to go.”
“He’s asked for you to bring it, ma’am,” he replied.
Rae smiled.
“Alright, Mr. Bowman. I’ll take it up and probably have my coffee with him in that case. Will you be leaving for Newnan soon?”
“As a matter of fact, my son-in-law is coming to pick me up this morning. Family outing in Atlanta, it seems.”
“Sounds like fun. I hope you have a great day with your family.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Thorn. I’ll see you on Tuesday morning.”
All of Rae’s house staff got two consecutive days off. It was something she believed very strongly in. Of course, they would rotate the days to ensure the house was always covered – Mrs. Newland saw to that – but everyone got their time off.
“Mrs. Newland, Mr. Thorn and I will be having our coffee in the bedroom. Could you have breakfast ready in the dining room at seven fifteen?”
“That won’t be a problem,” the housekeeper replied.
Rae nodded her thanks and lifted the tray carefully and went up the stairs to the second floor. Her heart was fluttering as she realized what John was up to. He hated waking up and not finding her sleeping beside him. When she arrived at the master bedroom door, it swung open and he stood there looking down at her, dressed only in his boxers. The look of lust in his eyes was unmistakable. They had both been too tired after their trip to Macon to make love the night before and he seemed determined to make up for it. She stepped through the door and allowed him to close and firmly lock it behind her while she placed the tea tray on the coffee table in their sitting area.
Turning toward him, she instinctively pulled the elastic from her ponytail and set her shiny curls flowing over her shoulders and back. John crossed the distance between them in a few steps, took her in his arms and kissed her deeply. He ran his hands from her shoulders to the base of her spine, sending shivers through her body. Without wasting a second, John’s fingers lowered the zipper on the back of her dress, slipped it from her shoulders and let it fall to the ground. His mouth went to her neck and then to the swell of her breasts, kissing the soft peaks with the gentle desire she knew only him to have. He undid the clasp of her bra carefully and pushed it back over her shoulders, letting it join the dress at her feet. He pushed down the lacy panties while she pulled at his boxer shorts. Stepping out of his underwear, he looked deep into her eyes and she went to him. The feel of her silky stockings and lacy garter belt drove him insane and he whispered in her ear.
“I love you in the mornings like this. I miss you every time I wake up without you next to me.”
“I do too, my love.”
He lifted her and turned, placing her gently on the bed before climbing in and kissing her again and again.
***
“Time to get dressed, John,” Rae whispered angrily, as she pulled her dress back onto her shoulders. “Zip me up and go put your clothes on for church. Breakfast will be served in fifteen minutes.”
“Don’t go,” he replied. “Let’s just stay in bed today. I’m not done yet.”
“Darling, you were done two ti
mes already. You’re supposed to present the outcome of last quarter’s fundraising efforts at the service today and I’ve got a tennis rematch with Ivy Turnbull this afternoon.”
“Oh, alright. I guess the world requires our presence after all,” he joked.
Rae helped John into a clean, white shirt and buttoned it up. Then she selected a pair of cufflinks from his closet while he pulled on his pants and a belt and pulled his waistcoat delicately over his shoulders. After doing up his cuffs, she put her hair carefully back into a ponytail and smoothed her dress. John sat at the edge of the bed, pulling on his socks and shoes as he watched her lovingly.
“Come on, silly. We have got to go.”
John sat alone at the dining room table, pretending to read the New York Times. He hardly tasted the food that was in front of him, although he did notice the coffee was too strong. After eating her usual bird’s portion of food, Rae had gone to say goodbye to Bowman and get their things ready for church and the club after that. It was a typical Sunday morning; everything was going the way it usually did, but his mind wandered away with the thoughts of business.
John had been trying to get back into the steel business for a year or so. Industry was John’s first love and where he had started earning a living as a young man. Law had been a worthy distraction over the years, but both he and Rae felt that branching out into commodities and manufacturing was a wise investment.
They’d decided to buy into a struggling local company as a first step. Their law practice was booming, even though they had taken on two new partners. Their plates were full. Getting into other businesses was going to be difficult, but it was the sacrifice they had to make if they were going to establish some form of sustainability for the company as well as for their children.
They had set up a meeting with the owners of the Southern Metal Works Company for that week and the two men would be in Alpharetta on Tuesday morning to start talks with the couple. Mr. Steve Moore and Emmitt Farmer were interested in discussing an injection of capital into their Georgia operations to expand production, but John had a different idea. He wanted a reformation of the entire institution. The four of them would form the board of directors of the newly created Thorn Industries and move to revitalize all Southern Metal’s sites. John could only hope that they would see things his way.
John’s mind wandered and he left the table, making his way into the family room. He looked at the photographs that lined the walls around him and smiled to himself. The future hadn’t always seemed so bright for Rae and him. It was a fact that they’d almost not gotten married at all. He put his hand to the frame of their wedding picture and shook his head.
Since then, so much had changed. Their law firm had taken off in Alpharetta and was growing steadily. They even had plans of expanding into a new building in a few years. Rae’s father had passed away and, being an only child, she’d inherited everything, including the beautiful Stone Mountain house they now lived in.
That had been a strange time in both their lives, and if ever he’d been a cynic about the existence of destiny and the ruling of fate over the events that took place in his life, he’d forever been cured. The truth was that everything had changed.
John had grown up on a tobacco farm just outside of Athens. His father had been a crop manager of a large farm for many years and though he didn’t care for the farming lifestyle, John had worked with his father growing the crop since he could lift a hoe. For years, he didn’t know what to make of his father’s presumptions that he’d follow in his footsteps and farm tobacco too. He didn’t know how to tell his father that he hated farming. Or how to tell him that he planned to find work in the nearby steel mills, save his money and pursue a law degree after high school without sounding childish and ungrateful. If no one else, John realized that his father had no obligation to provide him or his siblings with a tertiary education when he had a viable skill to teach them. It was expected that they would learn from their father and take up the mantle. College and a profession was a risky move on his part.
He wondered what the owners of Southern Metal were all about and how he was going to dodge their initial proposals and rally for the new Thorn Industries without killing the deal completely or insulting his potential future partners. Refusing to worry too much about it, he shrugged it off, took a seat on the couch and opened up the newspaper again; after all, he was the master here, the business mind behind Thorn & Lexington. He could not be bullied by anyone in the business. He’d simply make them understand that he already had plans and contract commitments lined up and waiting to put money in all their pockets. On that ticket, he had no doubts the offer he and Rae had put together would get them behind the wheel of Southern Metal without much hassle and launch Thorn Industries in a matter of weeks. Sighing deeply, he settled back into the couch and read the news.
Chapter Two
Athens, Georgia
1964
It was a particularly sunny day and from the front porch, John could see that his horse had been made ready and was tied to the post in the farmyard.
He mounted the black mare and rode out toward the fields. The workers were already busy in the dirt; as he drew near to the first field he could hear the sound of hand forks in the clay. The plantation’s first product of the year was being brought in. This crop was planted before the frost and was almost completely grown by early spring; then ready for the harvest in May. The tobacco was known for its mild taste, not having enjoyed the emboldening qualities of the full summer sun. That bolder crop had already been transplanted to the fields on the other side of the farm and had been planted in larger quantities too. It was usually a higher quality crop that commanded the highest prices on the market. Those plants would be carefully harvested leaf by leaf as they ripened and the crop would last all through the summer. That first set of plants was being uprooted. The land would then be planted in something like beans to enrich it.
John rode past the workers, tipping his hat to them as he went by. He stopped for a brief moment to watch the women tie the bunches of stripped tobacco leaves together and place them in the back of a pickup truck, before riding on to the north side of the farm to help his father oversee the planting of the cash crop. John knew that his father’s entire year was staked on the success of those fields. If he found himself in a position where he couldn’t meet the commitments he had with the factories, his reputation would be ruined and so would his finances.
He laughed out loud at the thought of his father failing. How could that possibly happen? He knew everything there was to know about farming, yet he had still been sure to team up with the best tobacco grower in the southern states and bring him on board as crop manager soon after his own promotion to farm manager. It should have been harder than it had been for Marcus Thorn to tie down such a tobacco farming magnate, but as it had turned out, Travis Brooks was not in high demand at all. Plantation owners in the Deep South didn’t like being dictated to about how to run their properties and that had decreased his desirability immensely. Travis was known for having some radical ideas about keeping farms productive and they hadn’t gained him much popularity. But Marcus had hired him and listened to him. Most of all, he believed in him. As a result, his tobacco was the first to harvest that year and he planned to be the first at market too.
As John crossed the river, he saw his father and Travis riding through the rows, watching as the workers planted one seedling after the other. It was just about 9 a.m. and the first field was almost done; John knew they only had three days to plant all six. He rode to the end of the row and then made his way over to the men who were in the shade of a tree.
“The work is going very well, Travis,” he heard his father say. “I’m real impressed with it.”
“Yup,” Travis replied in his southern drawl. “These planters are hard workin’. They listen good too.”
“I have my methods just like you do, Travis,” Marcus said, smiling. “I find that if you give a man a chance to be a m
an and earn an honest living, he’ll do his best to preserve it. That’s why I hire family men and the young men I take on have got to be their sons. A man with a family in his house will do everything to keep them fed, happy and safe.”
“That’s as true as God’s Word, Marcus,” Travis agreed.
“So, what’s the next move?”
“When the tobacco’s all in, the fields need replenishing so that’s where we plant some food. Corn, wheat, beans; anything that’ll feed us and fodder the soil. Get some o’ the men busy on that. Meanwhile, their kids and women can bring the spring vegetables in from the field and we can get those to market and make some money.”
“Sounds good. It’s a farm, after all. The work never ends.” Marcus turned to his son and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. To Travis he said, “I’m glad to have your help, man. I know we will be a success.”
“Thank ya, Boss.”
“Come up to the house for dinner tonight, Travis. I’m sure the boys and Mrs. Thorn will be happy to see you. You can join us in sending off young John here. He’s off to college in Atlanta in the fall.”
Chapter Three
Atlanta, Georgia
1968
John paused as he crested the hill and caught sight of Lexington House.
Three stories of red brick and cedar shingles; it boasted almost two acres of well-manicured land, a greenhouse, tennis court and herb and flower gardens in several well-appointed courtyards. What a magnificent sight it was, almost stately behind the rows of pecan trees that lined the driveway. There was a stand of Georgia pines that marked the edge of the property at the back of the house and created the perfect backdrop for it.
