by Lee Magner
“Why would he have thought I’d do that?” she asked, mystified. “He didn’t know how I—” She caught herself just before she admitted how she’d felt.
“He’d seen us together,” Case explained slowly. “And he assumed you might be loyal to me the way a girl…”
He looked at her and saw her blink and her cheeks turn red.
”… the way a girl in love might,” he finished.
Clare tried to snatch her hand away, but he tightened his grip. She couldn’t bear to look into his eyes. She was afraid he’d see too much in her own, so she looked away. He reached out and captured her jaw, pulling it around to look at him.
“You used to follow me around like a kid sister,” he said huskily. “That isn’t the same thing as love.”
“Of course not.” She took a deep breath and managed an unsteady laugh.
“And when you goaded me into kissing you, that was just a young woman trying out her newfound skills on an older man…”
Clare laughed uneasily and tugged at her hand. His grip turned into a vise. Her hand was going nowhere.
“Isn’t that right, Clare?” he demanded in a low, suspicious voice.
“Of course it is,” she agreed.
He leaned forward and pulled her toward him. “And just because we… may be a little attracted to each other…”
She looked into his eyes and saw the confusion swirling there.
”… so that in a tense situation, sometimes things get out of hand,” he went on. “Like they got out of hand the other day in the courthouse…”
Clare was mesmerized by him, couldn’t tear her gaze away to save her soul. She leaned toward him, and it seemed that he must have moved toward her because suddenly their mouths were touching ever so lightly.
And then his arms came around her and he was pulling her onto his lap and kissing her with the warm, hard passion that she’d hungered for.
His mouth was warm and sweet. And every touch of his lips sent radiance in waves all over her, all through her. When he deepened the kiss, she murmured in pleasure at the exquisite tendrils of sensation that tickled her body and feathered the depths of her heart.
She wanted to say his name, but she couldn’t and still kiss his tender, demanding lips, so she called it out in the depths of her mind. Case… oh, Case… why did you ever leave?
He slowly eased back the kiss until, finally, he lifted his mouth from hers and gazed down into her wide, open eyes.
“Why does this happen between us?” he whispered huskily, bewildered by the fire that ignited between them. It had happened like this before, in the courthouse. And fifteen years ago, here on this same, damned porch swing.
It had never been like this with anyone but Clare, he thought.
“Clare,” he murmured, rubbing his lips softly against hers. “What the hell is going on with us?”
“I think it’s called sexual attraction,” she said unsteadily, giggling in spite of herself. The happiness was what did it, she thought. The joy just welled up inside her like a hot vent in the depths of the ocean. “I don’t think we can do a thing about it, Case,” she added apologetically.
He grinned.
“Oh?” He kissed her cheek, and her ear, sliding his tongue delicately around the folds. “Oh, I think we can do something about it,” he argued gently. He settled her more comfortably on his lap. “But…we’re…old enough…to know…better,” he added between deep, provocative kisses.
Clare was awash with desire. It was getting harder and harder to resist the natural instinct for fulfillment. Desperately, she buried her face in his neck.
When she raised her face, she captured his head between her hands and kissed him full on the mouth, however, and she quickly slid back to the high level of need that she’d been fighting against just moments ago. Her tongue quicksilvered between his lips and darted lightly across the sensitive flesh inside his mouth.
The touch of her slender hands made him ache with yearning for her. He had repressed the yearning so deeply, for so long, that when it burst from the long confinement, it shook him to his very core. The wanting was so vivid, so sharp, that it hurt.
He sighed and slid his hands into her soft, wavy hair until he could touch her scalp with the tips of his fingers. With easy; rolling motions, he massaged away the tension in her head and her neck, then down her shoulders and her back.
Clare purred and arched like a cat being stroked.
And her pleasure was his pleasure.
Clare, he whispered tenderly in the secret part of his mind where no one ever heard what he said. Ahh, Clare...
She moaned in pleasure and half closed her eyes, rolling her neck as his fingers turned her muscles into liquid heat and his mouth set the heat ablaze with tiny fire bursts, all across her skin.
Her obvious delight in his touch was a match inflaming his own desire. Every nerve ending began to tingle. Every sense, finely tuned. Her scent, her taste, her feel… He was inundated with sweet agonies with every breath he drew, every spot he kissed, every movement of their bodies.’
“I think I like this information call,” Clare gasped as his hand slid beneath her blouse and touched her warm skin. “Oh, yes…” When he tugged his own shirt loose and pulled her hands against his bare chest, she eagerly explored the hard, muscular contours.
Settling herself astride his thighs, with her elbows resting softly on his shoulders, she looked into his face and then lowered her mouth to his for a slow, intimate kiss.
When his hands slid down over her hips, she caught her breath in surprise, and when he pulled her hips close to his, she clenched her thighs against his. In spite of their clothing, there was no doubt at all just how aroused each of them was, and Clare knew it.
“Clare,” he whispered against her cheek, his voice raspy and tense as he strained to keep himself in check. “We’ve got to cool it.”
She knew he was right, but she was thoroughly intoxicated by his nearness, drunk on his kisses, enslaved by the magic of his touch.
“Do you want to go to a motel?” he asked, nuzzling her neck.
“A motel?”
Clare blinked. Even as hot as she was, she knew she wasn’t checking into a one-night stand with him. She just couldn’t do that.
He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, clenching his fists in an effort to keep from caressing her.
“Yeah. I’d rather not make love to you on your front porch swing, if I can avoid it,” he said wryly. “Motels offer beds. And doors with a lock. Which would come in very handy right now.”
“You have a point,” she conceded huskily. “But, uh, I… No, Case. Not motel beds.”
His eyes remained closed, but his smile reappeared, looking a little regretful this time.
“I was afraid you’d say that,” he said mournfully.
She pulled her arms away, placing the palms of her hands on his warm, muscled chest. His skin was a little damp and the clean, male scent was incredibly sexy. Still, she forced herself to keep some space between their torsos. She knew it was her only chance to break free of the physical attraction that was binding them so strongly together.
When she would have slid off his thighs and straightened her clothing, he restrained her, holding her hands and placing them on her thighs.
“Let me look at you, Clare,” he whispered to her.
The wistful expression glimmering deep in his eyes made Clare’s heart turn over with yearning for him. Yearning to love him with her body and her soul.
His gaze traveled over her slowly, taking in the pretty lilt in her eyebrows, the umbral colors of her eyes in the moonlight, the graceful shapes of her arms and hands and legs, the soft sway of her breasts beneath the lightweight summer shirt.
He laid his hand over the swell of her breast, sliding his palm slowly over it, brushing the nipple into a tiny pouting mound of flesh. The shirt hid nothing from his touch. And he could imagine what she looked like beneath it.
He also knew it would be a very bad idea
to push the shirt any farther aside.
Neither one of them was showing much ability to hold back where kissing and caressing was concerned, he thought wryly.
Clare looked into the darkening blue of his eyes, the tension in his jaw, and knew he was struggling with himself. It was sweet, she thought, that he’d try to be so noble. Of course, he had always had that irritating noble streak where she was concerned, she recalled, annoyed.
The unrelieved sexual frustration fueled her annoyance, and she leaned her head back, making a silent howl of frustration.
“I feel the same way, you know,” he said huskily. He lifted a damp tendril of her hair away from her face.
“What do you do when you feel like this in Chicago?” she asked huskily.
He grinned.
“I don’t feel like this in Chicago,” he stage-whispered.
Clare made a face conveying total disbelief in that statement.
With his most innocent expression, Case repeated his comment. “I don’t feel like this in Chicago.” He leaned forward and kissed her throat as if to punctuate the assertion.
Clare wanted to cry and she wanted to scream. Why was she destined to fail with this man? she asked herself.
Something warm and silvery filled her eyes and splashed over onto her cheeks.
He brushed the salty teardrop away with his fingertip.
“Don’t cry, Clare,” he whispered huskily.
Pain scattered across his face, and he pulled her against his chest, pressing her head close to his, rocking her against his body.
“Don’t cry…”
They never heard the footsteps fading around the corner.
Or the car engine that started up a few blocks away.
Chapter 9
The platform and scaffolding went up on schedule, during the late morning and early afternoon on Wednesday, just as Clare had predicted.
Case had tried to make visits to Lexie’s grave as late in the evening as possible in an attempt to avoid running into anyone. He was reasonably successful. They were seen by three young boys chasing their dog across the entrance to the cemetery, but the boys were too young to recognize Case or Seamus. Someone had driven by to decorate a family grave for the holiday, and they’d given Seamus a curious look, but nothing had come of it, as far as Case could tell.
Thursday night was the challenge.
The bunting was being hung, and the place was crawling with volunteers helping the cemetery grounds keeper and the town maintenance director.
“I thought you said they’d be quittin’ by sundown,” Seamus said as they parked in the cemetery lot closest to the street and farthest from the huge iron fence that surrounded the grounds.
“Yeah. That’s what I said,” Case acknowledge grimly. “But that’s irrelevant now. Obviously, they’re still here.”
They watched as someone moved a ladder, climbed it and reached down for an assistant to hand them the bunting to tie along the top of the eight-foot fence.
Seamus started to open the car door.
“You could wait till they’re gone,” Case suggested evenly. “It could avoid a lot of potential trouble.”
Seamus chuckled. It was a cynical, weary laugh.
“D’you remember me ever avoiding trouble, boyo?”
Case swore under his breath and got out of the car, circling around it and striding across the blacktop after his shuffling old father.
“Fifteen years in the penitentiary didn’t teach you anything, did it?” Case muttered, his face grim with frustration and worry.
Seamus unsteadily patted his son’s strong shoulder.
“It taught me plenty, my boy,” he said, lifting his eyebrow and fixing Case with a hard stare. “It taught me that it’s never too late to live an honest and moral life. And that forgiveness feeds the soul the way clean bread and fresh water nourish the body.”
Case laughed in disbelief.
“Yeah? I hope you’re right. And I hope this crowd shares the sentiments. Especially the one about forgiveness,” he muttered.
The men who were hanging the bunting on the gate didn’t pay any attention to Seamus and Case. Neither did the clusters of people scattered across the grounds, sprucing up their family ancestors’ plots with stone scrubbings and fresh plants or patching crumbling headstones.
But there were a small number of women not too far from Lexie’s grave. When Case saw them, he knew their luck had run out. Honoria Bonney was among them, and she had spotted them the moment that they had walked over the horizon and into her field of view.
“Damn,” Case swore.
Seamus seemed unconcerned and followed the turn in the path that would take them to Lexie’s resting place.
Case nodded to the women, but they were too stunned to notice. Their eyes were focused on Seamus. And their expression of horror was unmistakable.
Seamus knelt and began his prayer while Case stood watchfully nearby.
Seamus was half-finished when Case saw Clare.
She was walking toward the knot of women, and she apparently had come from the cemetery’s administrative building.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he muttered. He didn’t want her caught in any cross fire—real or symbolic—while Seamus was concluding his prayers. He shot her a dark, irritated look.
Clare smiled back sweetly and waved at him.
She was going to do what she pleased, and he’d just have to take it with good grace, she seemed to be saying. Case gritted his teeth and turned his attention back to Seamus.
“Clare Browne, I’ll deal with you later,” he muttered. “And that’s a promise.”
Clare had expected him to be annoyed, and she read the signals from a distance without much surprise.
She didn’t have time to wave reassuringly a second time, however, since the gaggle of women she’d come to see turned en masse and pulled her into their lively exchange. The group consisted of Martha Lightman—the mother of Peter and Paula—Honoria Bonney and half a dozen young married women who used the Memorial Day Commemoration Committee as a stepping stone to social prominence.
Today the committee members were more concerned about Seamus and his presence here than they were about supervising the hanging of all those reams of bunting and the suitable placing of holiday decor.
“He’s praying at Lexie’s grave!”
“It looks like Case is helping him. I’m sure that evil old man couldn’t get here if Case didn’t bring him.”
“I just pray that Anita is late and—”
Martha Lightman put her hand across her mouth and gasped in shock. Everyone followed the direction of her stricken gaze. And then they gasped, too.
Anita Clayton was walking toward them from the direction of the parking lot. She seemed to be in reasonably good spirits. When she drew near, however, she saw the anxious expressions on the faces of all present. Except for Clare.
Clare was very concerned, but she’d had time to prepare herself for this. The committee members had not.
Clare stepped forward to greet Anita, giving her a hug and a friendly kiss on the cheek.
“Why do they all look like we’re being executed for Memorial Day?” Anita whispered in Clare’s ear.
Clare laughed uneasily. “Umm…”
Honoria stepped forward and assumed the leadership role, as she always did in difficult times. She took Anita’s hand in hers.
“Anita, dear, it’s so good to have you join us,” she exclaimed.
She offered the startled woman a gingerly hug and a carefully manicured smile.
“Why don’t we go find the mayor and the veterans’ committee,” she suggested with the satin smoothness of a practiced political campaigner. She managed to turn Anita so that her back was toward Lexie’s grave site.
The other women stood as still as statues, their eyes round with alarm.
“Well, why on earth are you all holding your breath?” Anita asked, laughing nervously. She pulled away from Honoria and turned.
She was about to ask Clare what was going on when, out of habit, she glanced toward her daughter’s grave.
All the blood drained from her face.
Clare hurried to support her, fearing she might faint from the shock. Anita’s arm trembled beneath Clare’s, and Clare put her arm around her in a gesture of comfort.
“What…is… that… man… doing—” Anita swallowed and focused hard to form the words “—at Lexie’s…grave?”
“He’s praying,” Clare murmured helplessly.
“Praying?” Anita said blankly. The pallor in her face was replaced by a flood of color. Angrily, she cried out, “Praying! How dare he… How dare he!”
Anita ran toward her daughter’s grave. She moved so quickly that Clare couldn’t hold her back. Clare ran after her.
“Anita, wait!” Clare pleaded. “Please, it’s not the way you think…”
Anita Clayton ran down the grassy slope in her summer heels, her hair neatly styled and sprayed, her fashionable summer dress fresh from the upscale mail-order catalog. A woman well into middle age who never ran anywhere, she careered toward her hated target breathlessly, as he rose awkwardly from his knees.
Case had moved toward Anita and intercepted her twenty feet from his father.
Her fists hit his chest and she screamed at him in outrage.
“Get your father away from my daughter’s grave!”
“Mrs. Clayton…”
She pounded his chest and hit his face with her soft, round fist.
Case grabbed her wrists and pulled her hands together in front of her, but she was beyond restraint.
“How could you? How could you bring him here?” Anita demanded of him hysterically. “You knew Lexie… you knew Walter and me…. You know we wouldn’t let your father come here! Not for any reason! Never, never…”
She was sobbing and struggling to free her hands. Furious, pleading looks directed at Case shifted to venomous, horrified glances toward Seamus.
Clare reached them and tried to help comfort the distraught woman. She put her arm around Anita and looked anxiously at Case.
“Anita…please…try to pull yourself together,” Clare pleaded. “There’s nothing Case can do, nothing any of us can do to keep Seamus away from Lexie’s grave. He’s free now. And he’s not committing any crime—”
