by Peggy Webb
“I don’t think Mother will be up this early. And quite frankly, I’m not up to any performances today.”
“Oh…” Eyes wide, lips parted, Sandi looked like a wounded child.
Matt despised what he had done. “I just thought we could try to be friends.”
He put his cup on the table without slamming it down, which was a major achievement considering the raw state of his nerves.
“I said I’d go along with your charade, and I plan to do exactly that. Don’t ask for anything more and don’t expect it.”
She drew herself up and looked six feet tall, although he knew that she was no more than five-six.
“You are the coldest, hardest-hearted man I’ve ever known.”
“Your assessment is correct.”
Sandi grabbed her juice and fled while Matt sat at the kitchen table swamped by loneliness and regret. He felt like a man with a gaping hole where his heart ought to be. He felt like the sole survivor of a nuclear winter.
“Pull yourself together,” he said.
“Talking to yourself?” It was Aunt Kitty, looking concerned.
“It’s a bad habit I’ve picked up lately.”
“Matt…” She sat down at the table and reached for his hand. “You’re not like your father.”
A memory he’d tried to bury suddenly surfaced. The summer of his thirteenth year, he’d wanted to plan a surprise birthday party for his mother. He’d saved enough money from his paper route to buy balloons and order a fancy cake, then he’d biked down to his father’s office to tell him the plans.
It was after five and the receptionist had gone, so Matt made his way back to his daddy’s office. As he passed by the examining room he heard sounds. Pushing open the door, he discovered Henry Coltrane examining Mrs. Wexford Quentin. Neither of them wore a stitch of clothes.
Matt bolted, and Henry ran after him, calling, “Wait, son, wait.”
“This means nothing,” Henry told him. “I love your mother. If you tell her, you’ll destroy her and tear the family apart. You don’t want to do that, now, do you, son?”
That had been Matt’s initiation into manhood, the summer of his thirteenth year when he promised to keep his father’s awful secret.
Even now the memory of what he’d done made Matt sick.
“How did you know?” he asked his aunt.
“I was your father’s nurse, Matt. Nothing escaped me.”
“But you never told Mother?”
“I didn’t have to. Lucy knew.”
“I’ve spent all these years protecting her from a truth she knew all along?”
“Yes.”
“Does Ben know?”
“Yes.”
“Probably everybody in Shady Grove knows.”
“No, I don’t think so. Ben would never tell, and the Foxes know how to keep a secret.”
His mother would have told the other Foxes. That sisterhood of women told each other everything. And yet, all these years Lucille O’Banyon Coltrane had lived as if life were a wonderful gift. Her exuberant spirit fooled Matt into believing his mother was on a cosmic carousel ride she enjoyed to the hilt.
“I probably should have talked to you years ago,” Aunt Kitty added. “That summer you became such a solemn, serious child. I suspected you had found out.”
“Why now?”
“Because I see you passing up opportunity after opportunity with good, intelligent women…like Sandi.”
Matt gripped his coffee cup as if it would anchor him to sanity. The careful world he’d constructed lay in shambles at his feet. The truth he’d believed for so many years was no longer valid.
And yet he was the same coldhearted man he’d always been, wasn’t he? He could offer Sandi Wentworth nothing.
Except an apology.
Matt pushed away from the table and kissed his aunt on the cheek.
“Where are you going?”
“To the garden,” he said.
Sandi saw Matt coming and ducked out of sight. She had no intention of repeating that sorry performance in the kitchen. She’d said awful things to him, hateful things that made her ashamed.
Besides, she didn’t want him to see her crying.
“Sandi? Where are you?”
She wasn’t planning to answer, but when she peered around the climbing rose and saw his face, she couldn’t help herself.
“Over here. In the gazebo.”
He stood in the opening framed by Don Juan roses and looked as uncertain as a little boy who has admitted stealing cookies. Sandi melted.
“The sunrise was beautiful,” she said.
“I’m glad.” He toyed with a red rose. “I’ll leave if you want me to.”
“No. Please stay.”
“I don’t deserve your mercy. I’m a total fool.”
“Oh, no. Sometimes you’re quite charming.”
“Sandi, do you mind if I sit down?”
“No. Please do sit down.” She attempted a smile that she hoped fooled him. “After all, it’s your gazebo.”
He sat on the adjacent side, and Sandi felt a quick stab of disappointment.
“I came to apologize,” he said.
“I’m the one who should apologize. I said hateful things to you, and—”
“Sandi, don’t.” He scooted around and touched a finger to her lips. “Shh. I don’t give in to noble instincts very often. Please, let me finish.”
“Okay.”
“I’m sorry I made you cry. It was not my intention and certainly not my desire.”
Her cheeks flushed at his choice of words while memories of being in his arms on the sailboat washed over her.
“Sandi, can you forgive me?”
“I forgive you, Matt.”
“Thank you.”
He captured her hand then turned it palm up and planted a soft kiss that made Sandi wish for more. Glancing toward Lucy’s window, she saw nothing except closed curtains.
“Your mother’s not watching.”
“I know.”
Suspended in their cocoon of grace, they sat hand in hand while the stillness built into a storm of desire that caught them both unaware.
Matt suddenly bolted out of his seat as if firecrackers had gone off in his pants. “I have to be going.”
She didn’t say, “Please stay.” She didn’t dare.
Sandi didn’t see Matt the rest of the day, which was probably a good thing. Her emotions were so jumbled she didn’t know what to say to him, what to do around him.
Though she was busy most of the day sketching Lucy, she kept an eye out for him, just in case. Late in the afternoon the sun vanished into an angry-looking bank of storm clouds, and by evening thunder and lightning ripped the sky.
Sandi glanced anxiously out the window. “It looks like a tornado brewing.”
“You’re not afraid, are you, Sandi?” Lucy said.
“I have to confess, storms terrify me. My daddy was killed in a tornado.”
“Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry. How awful that must have been for you and your mother.”
Sandi and her mother had cried for weeks. Meredith’s grief ended abruptly when Rafe Perkins crashed into the back of their car and into their lives. By the time Sandi emerged from her grief, Meredith had discarded Rafe in favor of a leather-maker she’d found on her first-anniversary trip to Mexico. He doted on the four-year-old Sandi, and that was his undoing. Her mother promptly ditched him and found Maxwell Garber, who doted on only two things: Meredith and the Wentworth money.
Fortunately, Sandi’s father had secured money for his daughter in a trust that neither Meredith nor Maxwell could touch. Maxwell lasted no longer than it took for him to find out the truth. Before Sandi could breathe a sigh of relief at his departure, Meredith Wentworth Perkins Santiago Garber had added Martin to her name.
Sandi lost count after that because she was too old for Meredith to play the young mother of a cute little child. Bundled off to Mississippi like damaged goods so her mother could
live a high-flying life in Paris, she might have died of soul starvation if it hadn’t been for C.J. and her parents.
Lucy’s voice brought her out of her reverie. “Sandi? Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine, thank you.”
“Don’t worry about the tornado, dear. This house is engineered to withstand the worst storms Mississippi can produce. If you need anything, Matt is right next door.”
“Thanks, I’ll remember that.”
“Well, then, you have a good evening, my dear.”
Sandi kissed Lucy’s cheek. “You, too. Get some rest. I’ll see you in the morning.”
She stored her art supplies then grabbed a sandwich in the kitchen and went to find a good book. Lightning lit the windows of the library and Sandi flinched. She settled into a chair and tried to read, but a boom of thunder sent her racing to the safety of her bedroom, a smaller, cozier space without the huge banks of windows to showcase the storm.
“The terror is all in my mind,” she told herself. “The storm can’t touch me.”
She put on her nightgown, climbed into the middle of the wonderful old bed and finally lost herself in the book. It was one of Lucy’s, Flames of Love.
While the storm gathered force outside, Sandi found herself laughing and crying and wishing she were the heroine Marguerite, who found a hero to love her forever.
Suddenly the house shook with thunder and her room lit up with streaks of lightning that looked like fire. Sandi bolted out of bed and through the connecting door.
Cozy in their bed socks, the women were lined up on Lucy’s king-size bed watching television. Out of the blue, Kitty said to Lucy, “You’ve got to talk to Matt.”
“Shh,” Lucy said. “This is the good part.”
“Lucy, you can’t avoid the truth forever.”
“Yes, you can,” Dolly said, then turned up the TV volume.
Kitty would not be deterred. “Matt knows about Henry. He kept the secret from you all these years, and it’s eating him alive. The two of you need to clear the air. And while you’re at it, you need to tell him you’re not dying.”
Dolly turned to Lucy and said, “She’s probably right about that, Lucy. Matt’s already in love with Sandi. All we’re doing with this charade is muddying the waters.”
Lucy looked chagrined. “I can’t.”
“Why not? You’ve got more guts than that, Lucille Coltrane.” Kitty rarely got riled, but when she did she could be a bulldog.
“Josh is coming tomorrow to make sure my soul is right with God.”
Kitty took umbrage. “He didn’t peep it to me.” Her only child was fixing to descend on O’Banyon Manor and hadn’t even told her.
“Imagine, the Reverend Josh O’Banyon walking into our little den of deceit,” Dolly said, and started laughing.
Her two friends looked at her as if she’d lost her mind, then joined in. They laughed so hard they had to clutch each other to keep from falling off the bed.
Finally Lucy reached for tissue and passed it around. “What have we done now?”
“We’ve done worse,” Dolly said.
Her two friends grabbed her hands and held on tight.
The fragrance of gardenia penetrated his sleep, and for a moment Matt thought he was in the courtyard. He burrowed deeper into his pillow and tried to find escape once more in deep sleep, but it eluded him. Thinking a change of position would help, he rolled over to his left side…right into a huddled lump of perfumed softness.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” she said.
“Sandi?” He moved back across his bed with the alacrity of a man running from stinging bees. “What are you doing in my bed?”
“I’m scared of the storm.”
He was thinking that was the oldest ploy in the book and was fixing to revise his opinion of her.
Then she added, “My daddy died in a tornado when I was three.”
“Come here.”
She moved into his arms and he held her tight. Sighing, she snuggled closer and he buried his face in her fragrant hair and it seemed they had always been this way.
“This feels so good,” she whispered, and he said, “Yes.”
Because it did. Because it was the middle of the night when guards were down. And because being by yourself in a bed, or even being with the wrong person in a bed, was the loneliest feeling in the world.
The elements renewed their fury and Sandi muffled her scream against his chest. He could feel the tremors in her body, feel her terror.
“It’s okay.” He caressed her back in long, slow strokes. “It’s all right. I’m here.”
She turned her face up to his and in the brilliant flash of lightning that bounced around the room he could see her eyes bright with tears.
He cupped her face and kissed her with all the tenderness a kiss of comfort is meant to convey. Sighing, she fell into the kiss. They both did, and suddenly it was not comfort they sought, but something more.
Her gown was thin and silky, her body soft and enticing. It felt like heaven. It felt like redemption.
He ran his hands down the long length of silk, then back up, skimming bare skin, reveling in sweet soft flesh.
“Sandi?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Wait here.” He slipped from the bed, determined to be safe this time. When he returned, he kissed her eyes, her lips, the tender skin behind her earlobe. And when his lips moved over her throat then down to her breasts, she caught his hair and pulled him to her, moaning.
His tongue wet the silk, teased the taut nipple beneath. Sliding his hand underneath her gown he found her hot, wet core while he suckled her through the thin fabric of her gown. It was a potent mix.
He stripped aside her gown and it pooled on the floor while he explored her storm-lit body. His tongue branded her belly, the tender skin of her inner thighs. Burying his face in her nest of curls he inhaled the musky, ready scent of her, delved his tongue inside to taste, explored deeply till he found the spot that made her arch upward, speared by pleasure.
This, he thought, this is the way it should be.
“There,” she whispered. “Right there. Don’t move.”
She held his head fast while he took her over the edge again and again until she was begging, “Please, please, please,” and he was mindless with desire.
As he lifted over her, he saw how beautiful she was, golden hair spread across the pillow, eyes bright with passion, lips parted and slightly swollen from their kisses.
Covering her mouth with his, he slid into her, slid so deep her eyes widened. With a cry of pure pleasure, she pulled him close and held him there while spasm after spasm shook her.
He loved the sounds she made, loved the way she expressed her pleasure, loved that he was the cause.
Her breath came out on a long sigh. “Ohhh, that was wonderful.”
“There’s more.”
“More?”
“Much, much more,” he said, then took up a rhythm that she matched perfectly, as if they’d always danced this erotic, primal dance, as if they’d been fashioned especially for each other, programmed so that only the two of them together matched.
With Sandi in his arms Matt was insatiable, unflappable, invincible.
The pace of their lovemaking escalated till it matched the fury of the storm outside. Taking Sandi with him, Matt rolled to his back and watched with a combination of tenderness mixed with awe while she discovered how a woman in charge can own the world.
Head thrown back, hands clenched with his, body racked by spasms, she cried out his name over and over.
Sweat-slick, nerves vibrating like too-tight piano wires, Matt rolled her onto her back and drove into her with a wild abandon that would scare him if he thought about it. But he was beyond thought, beyond reason, almost beyond control.
Her fingernails scored his back while she moaned, “Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes.”
Explosives detonated in him. The dam burst and the river rushed free. She
arched high again him, screaming her pleasure, then they both crash-landed on the damp, sweat-tangled sheets.
She caressed his back while he brushed her hair back from her love-lit face.
“Don’t move,” she whispered.
“All right.”
“Stay right there.”
“Okay.”
He shifted so his chest wouldn’t crush her, and she sighed once, softly, then closed her eyes and fell into sweet, peaceful sleep.
Matt watched her until he was certain she wouldn’t wake up, then he gently rolled to his side, wrapped her close and held on while wonder filled his soul.
He’d kept the storm at bay for her. He’d erased her fright and eased the terrors of her past.
He felt redeemed.
His redemption was short-lived, however. When he woke up and felt Sandi curled against him, he was racked with guilt. Every detail of their lovemaking was seared into his mind. The thing that wasn’t quite so clear was his motive.
Just how much of the previous night’s activities had been for Sandi’s benefit and how much for his? Sure, he’d made her forget her fear, but hadn’t a small part of him wanted to erase his sorry performance on the boat?
Heck, a big part of him had. Male ego. That’s what he had.
He looked at the sleeping woman, and desire rose, urgent and painful. How easy it would be to rouse her with a kiss, bury himself in her soft, slick folds and forget everything except satisfying the hunger that clawed at him.
What kind of cad was he turning into?
His father.
Careful not to wake her, Matt eased out of bed, dressed quietly then sat in the wingback chair near the window watching her. She came awake slowly, stretching and yawning. The sheet slid away and he could see how the tender skin around her nipples was still rosy from his attentions, how they stood erect the minute she became aware of his gaze.
“Matt?”
Her eyes glowed softly and her lips were still love-bruised. He wanted nothing more than to shut out the rest of the world, climb back into bed and make love until they were both mindless and sated.
“Good,” he said. “You’re awake.”
With the soft smile of woman well loved, she pulled the sheet over her breasts. “Last night was wonderful. I never knew it could be like that.”
