Bittersweet Rain

by Sandra Brown

  “Am I hurting you?”

  “No, my love, no.”

  “Caroline… Caroline…” He could repress his mounting passion no longer. Reaching the summit, he experienced the highest level of ecstasy he had ever known. It went on and on as his lifeforce pumped into her. And when it was over, he collapsed, spent and sated and loved, into her welcoming arms.

  “It sure is taking Caroline and Rink a long time to get down here,” Laura Jane complained. She was afraid the breakfast she had helped Haney prepare would get cold and therefore be ruined for Steve.

  “Why don’t you two go ahead,” Haney said.

  “I don’t mind waiting,” Steve offered.

  “No. You’re starving. I know you are.” Laura Jane spooned a heap of fluffy scrambled eggs onto his plate. “How many slices of ham do you want?”

  “Two,” he said.

  “Three,” she amended.

  Haney set her coffee cup on the countertop. “I’ll mosey upstairs and see if I can’t hustle them along. I’m sure they’ll want to get some sleep, but they really should eat first after being up half the night.” She went on her grumbling way, but Steve and Laura Jane barely missed her. They were engrossed with each other.

  At the top of the stairs, Haney looked curiously toward Rink’s bedroom door. It was open, but when she stuck her head inside he was nowhere to be seen. Nor was he in the adjoining bathroom. At least he didn’t answer her when she softly called out to him.

  “Humph!” she grunted, planting her hands on her hips. “Now where do you suppose…?” She glanced toward Caroline’s room. The door was closed.

  The housekeeper’s eyes narrowed in contemplation. “I send him up here with a tray for her. Now the tray’s disappeared and so has he. Her door is closed and I feel in my bones that it’s supposed to stay closed for a while.”

  She turned toward the stairs again. “Well, it sure isn’t any of my business what they’re doing in there, but I didn’t hear any conversation.” At the bottom of the stairs, she glanced back up, nodding her head in approval. “Makes more sense for her to be with Rink than it did for her to marry his daddy, that old buzzard,” she muttered as she made her way back to the kitchen.

  “Are they coming down?” Laura Jane asked.

  “No. Not any time soon, anyway.” Haney turned away and began to wash the dishes.

  “Why not?”

  “They’re sleeping, that’s why not.”

  “But they should eat something first. You said so yourself. I’ll go wake them and tell them—”

  “You sit yourself back down,” Haney commanded, turning away from the sink and trailing soapy water onto the floor with an indomitable finger. “They’re tuckered out. Now, you mind your own business and see to that hungry young man sitting there.”

  Hurt by Haney’s stern tone, Laura Jane slowly returned to her chair. Steve caught the housekeeper’s eye and looked at her inquiringly. He cast a glance toward the ceiling. Haney watched his face as he gradually began to comprehend the situation.

  Steve’s eyes glinted mischievously. “Laura Jane, after breakfast why don’t you come out to the stables with me? You haven’t been to see the filly in days.”

  Laura Jane looked up at him, her lightheartedness returning. “But I thought you would need to sleep this morning.”

  “Naw,” he said expansively. “I’m not tired. If Haney can spare you, I’d like for you to spend the morning with me, help me do some chores.”

  “Oh, Steve,” she said, pressing her hands together. “I’d love that.”

  Haney exchanged a look with Steve and he winked at her.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Taking up a strand of her hair, Rink whisked it back and forth over his mouth. He was lying on his back. Caroline was on her stomach, leaning over him.

  She tweaked clumps of chest hair and traced the swirling patterns with her fingertip. “Because I had to know how much you loved me. If I had told you that your father and I had never been intimate, would you have believed me?”

  “I might have. I would have known soon enough.”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t want our first loving to be a test.”

  His eyes fondly surveyed her face. “I see your point. But what if I had wholeheartedly believed you?”

  “Then it would have been easy for you to come to me, Rink.” She touched his nipple and watched it bead in response. “But I would never have known the extent of your love. Since you came to me, believing the worst but still loving me, I know that you were willing to sacrifice your pride for your love.”

  Drawing her down to him, he kissed her long and deeply. When he finally ended the kiss he said, “Not that I particularly want to discuss this right now, but why didn’t you ever sleep with Roscoe? Don’t tell me any nobility on his part kept you a virgin.”

  “No, I wouldn’t try to convince you of that. I think he intended to consummate the marriage on our wedding night.” She closed her eyes and shuddered. “He came into this room. I didn’t know how I was going to survive it, loving you as I did.” She brought his hand to her cheek and absently rubbed the backs of his fingers over it. “But I had made a bargain and I was willing to live up to it.”

  She fell silent. Rink stared at the ceiling, not even wanting to think of her sharing the same space, the same air, with that foul old man. “What happened, Caroline?”

  “He kissed me several times. That’s all. Then he left me without a word. I was confused. I didn’t know what to think. It wasn’t too many days later that I began to notice that he was ill. I saw things that I wouldn’t ordinarily have seen if I hadn’t been living with him. He took huge quantities of stomach remedies, things like that.

  “I realized when he didn’t come to my room again that he was more than likely impotent and that this stomach ailment was responsible. Of course, I know that for a fact now. We never spoke of it. It would have been such a blow to his ego to try and fail that he never tried. We lived platonically.”

  After a brief silence, he asked, “Would you have ever told me?”

  “You mean, to spare us all that antagonism? I don’t know, Rink. I asked myself that every day. Why didn’t I just tell you and put an end to it?” She ran her finger down the length of his nose. “I have my pride, too. I wanted you to love me in spite of everything.”

  “It was tough. I wanted you. But every time I thought of you and him, I—”

  “Shhh,” she said, stopping his words by laying her index finger lengthwise over his lips. “I know. I understand what you were suffering.”

  “Do you know what he told me after you left the room the night he died?” She shook her head. “I told you he left me a legacy. It was this. He told me that I would never have you because my pride wouldn’t let me.” His eyes melted into hers and one corner of his lip lifted in a half smile. “He was wrong, wasn’t he? He didn’t count on my loving you this much.” He touched her face. “Then he told me always to remember that you had been his wife, that he had had you first.”

  She stared at him, astonished. “You mean he deliberately led you to believe that—”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, my darling.” She kissed his cheek softly and brushed strands of hair off his brow. “I thought you just assumed, but to think he died wanting you to believe that lie.”

  Rink laughed scornfully. “He knew me well. It almost worked to keep us apart.”

  “I’m glad it didn’t.”

  “God,” he whispered savagely, “so am I.” He wound a handful of her hair around his fist. “When I think of all the hours I tormented myself over it. Every time I thought about you with him, my guts would wrench so hard it hurt. And all that time, you were the same.” He touched her lips. “My Caroline of the summer woods. The same. The very same.”

  He pulled her down and kissed her until they broke away from each other breathlessly. “The same, but different.”

  She could tell by his softened expression that the discussion about her mar
riage to his father was over. “Different? How so?” she asked impishly, bending her knees and then raising her feet in the air. She pointed them daintily, like a ballerina. He watched them. They were beautiful feet, slender, high-arched. Her toes were polished a frosty coral shade. He had erotic plans for those toes.

  He responded to her flirtatiousness. “For instance…” He wedged his hand beneath her. “Your breasts.” He took one in his hand and kneaded it.

  “What about them?”

  “They’re larger.” He rolled the nipple between his thumb and finger. “This is darker. Not much. But slightly.”

  “Anything else?”

  “You’re softer, rounder, much more womanly, but with the same fawnlike grace of a girl. You’re everything I’ve dreamed about for years. More.”

  “You’re not disappointed?”

  He dragged his tongue along her collarbone and hotly kissed the top curve of her breast. “No, God no.” He glanced up at her. His eyes were regretful. “But I’m afraid you were.”

  “Not I, Rink Lancaster.” She kissed his eyebrow. “Not I.”

  “But you didn’t… you know. What all the ladies’ magazines say you’re entitled to.”

  Her three middle fingers played with his lips. “And it didn’t matter a bit. I experienced yours. I watched it, felt it inside me, knew what it was like for you. I wanted to witness you loving me.”

  His arms closed firmly around her. “I do, you know. Love you. Even though I’ve acted like a bastard the last few weeks, said things, insinuated things. The more I loved you, the more rotten I behaved.”

  Laughing softly, she laid her head on his chest and rested her hand low on his stomach. “You don’t have to remind me how rotten you’ve been at times. But I knew why. And I forgive you. I love you.”

  He covered her hand and moved it down. “Mind?”

  She cupped her hand over him. “Not at all. I love touching you.”

  His hand went to her breast and treasured it. “Let’s sleep for a while.”

  “You want to sleep?”

  “Not really. But I want to wake up with you.”

  It was shortly after noon when they came downstairs. Arm in arm, they were smiling at each other, so they didn’t see Laura Jane and Steve until they reached the wide foyer.

  “Steve wants to talk to you, Rink,” Laura Jane announced. She looked like a little girl about to burst for having to keep a birthday secret. Her eyes were shining. She couldn’t stand still.

  Rink looked first at her, then at Steve, who was nervously rotating the brim of his straw cowboy hat between his fingers. “Caroline and I are starved. Can it wait till after lunch?”

  “Yes.” “No.” They answered in unison.

  Caroline, sensing what might be on Steve’s mind, diplomatically intervened. “I’m sure we’ll all feel better after lunch.” Giving Rink a loving look, she disengaged her arm from his and went to Laura Jane. “Does Haney have it ready?” She steered the young woman toward the dining room. “What does Steve want to talk to Rink about?” she asked softly.

  “Us getting married,” Laura Jane whispered back.

  “Then I suggest we wait until after he’s had something to eat.” Caroline squeezed her arm in affectionate support.

  During lunch, Haney brought the cordless telephone extension into the dining room. “It’s the sheriff.”

  He had called to say that the arsonists had been arrested. One of them, the one who admitted to calling Barnes and warning him of the fire, had broken down and confessed, implicating the others. “It won’t do them much good to plead innocent. I figure we’ll have formal confessions from the other three by suppertime.”

  “Thanks, Sheriff. Be sure that their families are taken care of, food, rent money, whatever they need for the next several months and send me the bill.”

  He hung up and reported the news to the others. As soon as the sherbet dishes had been cleared away, Laura Jane excitedly herded everyone into the study. “Go ahead, Steve,” she said, nudging him.

  His Adam’s apple slid up and down as he swallowed. “Rink, with your blessing, I want to marry Laura Jane.”

  Giving away nothing of what he thought of the request, Rink sat down in the deep leather chair behind the wide desk. He took a sip of his iced tea, which he had carried with him from the dining room. “And without my blessing?”

  Steve’s eyes never wavered. “I still want to marry her.”

  Rink studied the man for a long, tense time. Neither pair of eyes moved from the other. Finally Rink said, “Ladies, will you excuse us please? And, Caroline, please close the door behind you.”

  “How did you know I’d be here?”

  “A hunch.” He pushed aside the branches of a pine sapling and came into the clearing. She was sitting beneath a tree, her legs tucked under her, a book resting on her lap. She hadn’t been reading it but had been staring into space when he came through the trees. He went to the tree, propped his hand on the trunk and looked down at her upturned face. “Don’t you know it’s dangerous for you to be out in the woods alone?”

  “Why? These are my woods.”

  “But some sex-crazed man might come along and ravish you.”

  “That’s what I’m counting on.”

  Laughing, he dropped down beside her and gathered her in his arms. He kissed her lightly several times all over her face, then pressed his mouth with firm possessiveness over hers. She indulged him for only a moment before pushing him away. “Wait. First I want to know what you told Steve.”

  “I told him if he ever did anything to hurt her, I’d kill him.”

  “You didn’t!”

  He shrugged and grinned at her devilishly. “Well, I said it in a nice way.”

  “But you did consent to their getting married?”

  “Yes, I did,” he said solemnly.

  She hugged him hard. “Rink, I’m so glad.”

  He eased her away to look at her. “Are you? Do you really think that will be best for Laura Jane?”

  “Yes, I do. She loves him. And you don’t have to worry about him hurting her. He idolizes her. He’s never talked about his past, but I get the feeling that it was dismal. Then the war and losing his leg. I’m sure Laura Jane is like a fairy princess to him. He can’t quite get over being allowed to touch her.”

  “He sounded sincere,” Rink said musingly. “I made the condition that Laura Jane would always live at The Retreat. I don’t think she’d adjust to another home. He agreed, but insisted that he be given more responsibility. He’s touchy about her being an heiress and him a hired hand.”

  “I would expect that of him. He works harder than anyone to compensate for his handicap.”

  “He made no bones about the way he feels. He told me, or maybe warned is a better word, that their marriage would be a real one.” His brow furrowed. “Do you think Laura Jane can tolerate sleeping with a man?”

  Caroline laughed and burrowed her nose in his neck. “I get the impression that Laura Jane has been chasing Steve around the stable for months and that he’s been the one trying to save her virtue.”

  “But does she understand the responsibility that goes with sex?”

  “Rink.” Placing her hands on his cheeks and capturing his full attention, she said, “Laura Jane was born with a deficiency for learning. But she has a woman’s emotions and a woman’s body. No one should deprive her of what that body needs, any more than it should be deprived of nourishment or air. She’ll be happier now than she’s ever been. He loves her. He’ll cherish her. They’ll work the rest out between them.”

  She could feel his tension ebbing, and the taut lines in his face began to relax. It thrilled her to know how much he valued her opinion.

  “What about you?”

  “Me?” she asked.

  “What about your needs all these years and the deprivation you imposed on yourself?”

  “I survived on memories and dreams. Memories of you in this place. Dreams of what I thought co
uld never be.”

  He inched down onto the soft grass with her and began to unbutton her blouse. “You thought about me? Every once in a while?”

  “Every day. Every hour. And even if I had never seen you again, I would have been thinking of you the moment I died.”

  His eyes closed briefly with the emotion that swept him. When they opened, they shone down into hers. “I hear thunder. Or is that my heart?”

  She smiled. He had said almost those exact words once. “Thunder. It’s going to rain.”

  “Do you mind?”

  “I prefer it.”

  “Sweet, sweet,” he whispered across her mouth. “God, I love you.”

  She helped him take off his shirt. He stood and she was an avid audience as he unbuckled his belt, unzipped his slacks and stepped out of them. Hooking his thumbs in a brief pair of light blue underwear, he peeled it down his hard, sinewy thighs.

  His nakedness matched the wilderness setting. In the darkening light, a harbinger of rain, his body stood bold and primeval. Even as she watched, raindrops began to fall on his bronze skin.

  Kneeling beside her, he pulled her to a sitting position and took off her blouse. Her brassiere was lacy and sheer, a contrast to those she had worn years ago. Through the silk confection, he touched her breasts. He teased the nipples until they strained against the tenuous veil.

  “Look at what you’ve done,” she said scoldingly as she shimmied out of the garment after he had unsnapped it. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

  “Yes,” he replied contritely, looking anything but.

  He unbuttoned her full peasant skirt and pulled it off, leaving her only in her panties. Then he bent to work on the leather thongs of her sandals, which wound seductively around her ankles. When her feet were free of the sandals, he caressed them, massaging her arches and wringing the toes between his strong fingers. She propped herself on her elbows and watched this loving ritual in wonderment. But when he lowered his head and his tongue touched the tips of her toes, her breasts trembled with passion.

  “Rink,” she cried softly, and fell back onto their bed of verdant undergrowth.